RETROSPECTIVE by Ruth Asawa
アメリカ人彫刻家でありアーティストのルース・アサワ(Ruth Asawa)による作品集。2025年4月から9月にかけて「サンフランシスコ近代美術館(SFMOMA)」で開催の展覧会に伴い刊行された。同展は、「ニューヨーク近代美術館(MoMA)」(2025年10月~2026年2月)、スペインの「ビルバオ・グッゲンハイム美術館(Guggenheim Museum Bilbao)」(2026年3月~9月)、スイスの「バイエラー財団美術館(Fondation Beyeler)」(2026年10月~2027年1月)に巡回する。
A landmark survey of the wide-ranging practice of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists
Best known for her sinuous looped-wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) used everyday materials to create endlessly innovative works in a variety of media over her more than six-decade-long career, from her student days at the experimental Black Mountain College in the 1940s through her mature years in her adopted home city of San Francisco.
This extensively illustrated volume explores the astonishing expansiveness of Asawa’s work, from the abstract looped-wire sculptures for which she garnered national attention in the 1950s to her nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. The book explores the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative practice, and highlights the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.
Essays and other writings consider Asawa and her work within the context of modern abstract sculpture, through the lens of craft and the materiality of wire, and in relation to her Asian American identity and her personal history as a Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family during World War II. Focus texts illuminate the connections between Asawa and key artistic figures such as Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.