A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, called Untitled (S.175, Hanging Single-Lobed, Four-Layer Continuous Form within a Form), dated c. 1992.

American artist, educator, and arts advocate 

 (1926-2013) is known for her extensive body of wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. Born in rural California, Asawa first studied under professional artists while her family and other people of Japanese descent were detained at Santa Anita, California, in 1942. Following her release from an incarceration camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, sixteen months later, she enrolled in 1943 in Milwaukee State Teachers College. Unable to receive her degree due to continued hostility against Japanese Americans, Asawa left Milwaukee in 1946 to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, then known for its progressive pedagogical methods and avant-garde aesthetic environment. Asawa's time at Black Mountain proved formative in her development as an artist, and she was particularly influenced by her teachers Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, and the mathematician Max Dehn. She also met architectural student Albert Lanier, whom she would marry in 1949 and with whom she would raise a large family and build a career in San Francisco. Asawa continued to produce art steadily over the course of more than a half century, creating a cohesive body of sculptures and works on paper that, in their innovative use of material and form, deftly synthesizes a wide range of aesthetic preoccupations at the heart of postwar art in America.

Asawa’s work has been exhibited widely since the early 1950s, including early solo exhibitions at Peridot Gallery, New York in 1954, 1956, and 1958. In 1965, Walter Hopps organized a solo exhibition of the artist’s sculptures and drawings at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum) in California, where Asawa completed a residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop the same year. Other solo presentations include those held at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1973); Fresno Art Museum, California (2001; traveled to Oakland Museum of California through 2002); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2006); Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2012); and the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California (2014).

In 2018 to 2019, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis presented the major museum exhibition 

. An accompanying catalogue published by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Yale University Press includes essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg. The two-person exhibition, 

was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2021. In 2022, 

 was on view at Modern Art Oxford, England, and later traveled to the Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway. In September 2023, 

, a solo presentation of the artist’s work, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and traveled to the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, in 2024.

The artist’s works have also been included in significant group exhibitions, including 

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957

, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015; traveled to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, through 2017); 

, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); 

Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016

Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction

, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017); 

The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists

, The Drawing Center, New York (2019); and 

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury

, Art Institute of Chicago (2019). A selection of the artist's work was presented at the 59th Venice Biennale, 

In addition to her wire sculptures, Asawa is well known for her public commissions, particularly in San Francisco and the wider Bay Area. These include the much beloved 

fountain in Ghirardelli Square (1966-1968) and the 

 outside the Grand Hyatt Union Square (1970-1973), the latter of which includes hundreds of baker’s clay images molded by local schoolchildren, friends, and other artists cast in bronze.

Upon moving to San Francisco in 1949, Asawa, a firm believer in the radical potential of arts education from her time at Black Mountain College, devoted herself to expanding access to art-focused educational programs. She co-founded the Alvarado School Arts Workshop in 1968 and was instrumental in the creation of the first public arts high school in San Francisco in 1982, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor in 2010. Additionally, Asawa served on the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a trustee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Asawa was awarded a 2022 National Medal of Arts by President Joe Biden in 2024, only the second visual artist to receive this high honor posthumously.

The Estate of Ruth Asawa has been represented by David Zwirner since 2017. The gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition of the artist’s work took place the same year in New York, and was accompanied by an extensive publication that includes texts by Tiffany Bell and Robert Storr and features an illustrated chronology. In 2020, the gallery’s London location presented 

, which was the first major presentation of the artist’s work outside of the United States. In 2021, 

was on view at the gallery’s West 20th Street location in New York. The first solo exhibition of Asawa's work in Greater China, 

was presented at David Zwirner Hong Kong in 2024.

The first international institutional and posthumous survey of the artist’s work, 

, is currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will travel to The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; and Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, through January 2027. The accompanying catalogue, edited by the retrospective's curators, Janet Bishop and Cara Manes, contains new scholarship on the artist.

The artist’s work is represented in prominent museum collections, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Asawa has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards.

Ruth Asawa with hanging wire sculpture, 1951. Photo © Imogen Cunningham Trust

A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

’s (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop art and minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama has been the subject of both solo and group presentations worldwide. She presented her first solo show in her native Japan in 1952. In the mid-1960s, she established herself in New York as an important avant-garde artist by staging groundbreaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained renewed widespread recognition in the late 1980s following a number of international solo exhibitions, including shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, both of which took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale, to much critical acclaim. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, co-organized 

, which toured to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1998-1999), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1999).

In 2011 to 2012, her work was the subject of a large-scale retrospective that traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America. In 2015, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, organized a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s practice that traveled to Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Helsinki Art Museum. In 2017-2019, a major survey of the artist’s work, 

, was presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 

, which marked the first large-scale exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Southeast Asia, opened at the National Gallery of Singapore in 2017 and traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta. In 2019, 

 an exhibition tailor-made specifically for the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, included more than forty works by the artist.

A comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work was on view at Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 2021, and traveled to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2022. 

 was on view at The New York Botanical Garden in 2021. In 2022, several major exhibitions of the artist’s work opened, including 

Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, 

One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection, 

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. A major retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre, 

was on view from 2022 to 2023 at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, then traveled to Guggenheim Bilbao (2023) and Serralves Museum, Portugal (2024). Also in 2023, 

was on view at Aviva Studios, Manchester, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented the exhibition 

 was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024, and a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work was on view at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, through the spring of 2025.

In October 2025, the Fondation Beyeler will present the first installment of a major traveling European exhibition of Kusama’s work, marking the first retrospective devoted to the artist in Switzerland. The exhibition will then travel to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, through 2027.

In 2023, a commissioned mosaic by Kusama, 

A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe

 (2022) was unveiled at the new Madison Concourse at Grand Central Station, New York, and will remain on permanent view.

Kusama has been represented by David Zwirner since 2013. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition in 2013 with the artist, titled

, spanned all three spaces at West 19th Street in New York. Her second gallery solo show, 

, was held at David Zwirner, New York, in 2015. Subsequent solo shows of the artist’s work at David Zwirner, New York include 

 in 2019. In 2021, David Zwirner, Victoria Miro, and Ota Fine Arts jointly presented 

I WANT YOUR TEARS TO FLOW WITH THE WORDS I WROTE

 in London, Tokyo, and New York. In 2023 at the gallery’s 19th Street location, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with David Zwirner, 

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers

Yayoi Kusama Museum, a museum dedicated to the artist’s work, opened October 1, 2017, in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition 

Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What

. The museum’s fourteenth exhibition devoted to her work, 

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among numerous others. Kusama lives and works in Tokyo.

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Doro Globus is a writer, editor, and publisher specializing in creative culture, with a focus on arts publishing. Her first book, 

, is a fun inside look at the life of an artwork, from studio to exhibition. A passionate advocate for sharing creativity, Globus has dedicated her career to telling stories of artists and writers. She is Associate Publisher of David Zwirner Books and has worked in arts publishing for nearly twenty years. She has written about artists and art historians including Dawn Ades, Michael Bracewell, Fred Wilson, and Bridget Riley.

Doro Globus


Ruth Asawa found inspiration everywhere—whether she looked to her children, her garden, or the warmth of her home, she believed that anything could become art. Her engaging work invites young artists to discover how creativity can sprout from anywhere.

Through her unique wire sculptures and natural watercolors, Asawa demonstrated that even the simplest materials can be transformed into something extraordinary. Her work encourages children to explore their own imaginations and to see the beauty in the everyday world around them.




Pumpkins, polka dots, flowers, and so much more! Yayoi Kusama creates art that's bursting with color and creativity, bringing “never-ending joy” to children. Her playful and vibrant masterpieces are perfect for young artists who love to explore and have fun with colors and shapes.

Kusama's radiant world invites young imaginations to run wild, offering endless possibilities for creative expression. With her signature bold patterns, she encourages kids to embrace their own unique artistic voices.

What Artists Make Set

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.