Exceptional Works: Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa in her studio, mid-1950s (detail). Photo by Paul Hassel; the sculpture to the artist’s right is Untitled (S.335, Hanging Four-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), c. 1954, now in the collection of Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland

“What I was excited by was that I could make a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.”

—Ruth Asawa, 1981

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (S.040, Hanging Eight-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other)

, c. 1956

Hanging sculpture—enameled copper and galvanized steel wire

80 x 16 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches (203.2 x 41.9 x 41.9 cm)

A rare hyperbolic sculpture by Ruth Asawa, this striking, large-scale looped-wire work was included in the artist’s current retrospective organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Related examples featuring interlocking conical forms are held in major museum collections.

Ruth Asawa, 1954. Nat Farbman/Time & Life Pictures, via Getty Images

A page from Ruth Asawa’s class notebook while a student of Max Dehn at Black Mountain College, c. 1947-1948. © Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.

Asawa began working with wire in the late 1940s as a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where her teachers included Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, and the mathematician Max Dehn. “I consider Ruth Asawa to be the most gifted, productive, and originally inspired artist that I have ever known personally,” Fuller later said.

The school’s multidisciplinary curriculum included science and mathematics as well as arts subjects. Asawa spent three years at Black Mountain, absorbing the experimental teaching techniques and manual, holistic approach that would deeply inform her work.

Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College, c. 1948-1949. Photo by Hazel Larsen Archer

Many of the motifs and forms that interested Asawa from her studies at Black Mountain College presage her later work. The dance classes she took in her final year, taught by legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham, anticipate her deep interest in movement and perception, as reflected in her transparent, suspended sculptures. Asawa also took Josef Albers’s famous Basic Design class; these included a drawing exercise based on the Greek meander, a single repeated interlocking line resembling a key motif, which students explored through varying scales and shapes. Asawa’s notes from the mathematics classes taught by Max Dehn also show how her learnings were to inform her later sculptural work with form and pattern. Fuller, who was to prove a highly influential presence for Asawa, advocated for the invention of structures by learning from nature.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (SF.044b, Potato Print - Meander, Blue/Orange), c. 1950-1959

Asawa began working with wire in the late 1940s, having learnt a looping technique from local artisans on a trip to Toluca, Mexico in 1947 as a volunteer for the American Friends Service Committee. She executed her looped-wire sculptures in increasingly intricate, interwoven configurations.

As curator Tamara H. Schenkenberg describes:

"By the early to mid 1950s, Asawa’s commitment to manual engagement with the material, coupled with her interest in solving an ever-increasing and cumulative set of formal problems posed by her constructions in wire, led her to a series of elaborate permutations.... [These included] an increasing number of lobed forms that redirected the sculpture vertically, adding the element of height to the experience of the work. Asawa also started to experiment with different types of wire, which led to often striking variations in color. These complex constructions also started to feature a greater number of interlocking parts that move from the interior out to the exterior of the sculpture (and back again), resulting in intricately overlapping layers that dazzle the eye, but also create a sense of intrigue."

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.040, Hanging Eight-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), c. 1956 (detail)

“I realized that I could make wire forms interlock, expand, and contract with a single strand.”

—Ruth Asawa, 1981

Installation view, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2025. Photo by Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

Installation view, Ruth Asawa: A Line Can Go Anywhere, David Zwirner, London, 2020

In the early 1950s, Asawa began exploring the use of conical forms as an alternative to spheres, at first linking several together with a single chain to create compositions of overlapping cones. These constructions developed into forms made of intersecting cones and hyperbolic shapes, such as the present work, that the artist described as “interpenetrating.”

This sculpture comprises open hyperbolic shapes that intersect one another, and is one of only a small number of sculptures by the artist to utilize this kind of configuration.

Although she didn’t make preparatory sketches, Asawa would on occasion draw or diagram ideas for three-dimensional works. Her chosen technique for these diagrams made use of preprinted forms on a special kind of paper with a thin layer of wax adhesive, known as a Zipatone, that was applied to a support using pressure from a stylus or other instrument. The Zipatone work pictured below right depicts hanging sculptures, including one with hyperbolic forms.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (SF.028a, Triangle Study), c. 1951-1952 (left); Untitled (ZP.17F, Nine Looped-Wire Sculptural Forms), c. 1955-1959 (right)

The present work was made using enameled copper and galvanized steel wire, which Asawa alternates to create a rhythmic composition of color and form. Asawa typically worked with the materials she had at hand, finding it more economical to utilize the wire she already had, particularly in the earlier part of her career. The present work is one of a number of forms made using two different types of wire: the dark gray-colored galvanized steel wire contrasts with the deep gold of the enameled copper wire—a rare material in the artist’s works, as the enamel allows the metal to keep its color and does not patinate over time.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.040, Hanging Eight-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), c. 1956 (detail)

“A total original.... She created a world in which forms brim and bloom and multiply without end.... Asawa’s work affirms the power of art to allow us to begin anew.”

—Deborah Solomon, The New York Times, 2025

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.335, Hanging Four-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), c. 1954. Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland. Installation view, Ruth Asawa: A Line Can Go Anywhere, David Zwirner, London, 2020

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.027, Hanging, Six-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), 1954. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Installation view, 50 Works 50 Weeks, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2025

Similar works are held in important collections including Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Asawa’s first posthumous museum retrospective, a collaboration between San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is a comprehensive survey of her groundbreaking career. Having been presented in San Francisco and New York last year, the exhibition opens at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on March 19.

“[Asawa’s] sinuous sculptures, suspended from the ceiling of some of the dozen galleries ... surprise, mesmerize, and delight with [their] transparency, fluidity, complexity, and elegance.”

—Carol Canter, Medium, 2025

Installation view, Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.040, Hanging Eight-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes that Penetrate Each Other), c. 1956

“I am able to take a wire ... and define the air.”

—Ruth Asawa, 1995

Learn More about Ruth Asawa