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Ruth Asawa70s Bronze Flower Sculpture Plaque limited edition Signed, Berkley Arts Foundry1979
1979
$4,500
£3,400.50
€3,926.75
CA$6,288.07
A$6,977.14
CHF 3,654.78
MX$85,558.52
NOK 46,487.52
SEK 43,882.24
DKK 29,284.20
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About the Item
Ruth Asawa
Bronze Flower, 1979
Cast Bronze relief plaque with original presentation box
5 1/4 × 6 1/4 × 1/4 inches
Numbered from the Edition of 2500
Signed and dated 'Asawa 1979' (lower edge) incised in the bronze; numbered; stamped "Designed Exclusively for Crown Zellerbach Corporation"; foundry copyright
Cast at the Berkley Arts Foundry for Crown Zellerbach
Ruth Asawa's estate is represented by David Zwirner.
This beautiful, limited edition signed cast bronze flower plaque makes a distinctive and original gift! It bears the artist's incised signature and is uniquely numbered from the limited edition of 2500. In 1979, the Crown Zellerbach Corporation of San Francisco, which had worked closely with her on neighborhood arts programs, commissioned Asawa to make a series of bronze bas-relief plaques, including this beautiful piece, which were cast by the Berkeley Arts Foundry.
Cast at Berkley Arts Foundry for Crown Zellerbach
Another example of this work was exhibited in the show "On Black Mountain: The Bauhaus Legacy in America", April 5, 2019-April 27, 2019 at the Sager Braudis Gallery in Columbia, Missouri. It is reproduced on page 13 of the exhibition catalogue.
Unframed
Ruth Asawa Biography
American artist, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa (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 was first exposed to professional artists while her family and other Japanese Americans were detained at Santa Anita, California, in 1942. Following her release from an internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, eighteen 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 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, 2002); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2006); Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2012); and Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California (2014).
In 2018 to 2019, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis presented Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work in more than a decade. An accompanying catalogue published by Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Yale University Press includes essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg. The two-person exhibition, Lineage: Paul Klee and Ruth Asawa was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2021. In 2022, Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe was on view at Modern Art Oxford, England, and later traveled to the Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway. Opening September 16, 2023 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York is Ruth Asawa: Through Line, a solo presentation which will later travel to the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston.
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, 2016-2017); America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2017); 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, The Milk of Dreams (2022).
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 Andrea fountain in Ghirardelli Square (1966-1968) and the San Francisco Fountain 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.
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.
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 Ruth Asawa: A Line Can Go Anywhere, which was the first major presentation of the artist’s work outside of the United States. In 2021, Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible was on view at the gallery’s 20th Street location in New York.
-Courtesy David Zwirner
More about Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was a prominent American artist, educator, and arts advocate known for her innovative wire sculptures. She is celebrated for her unique looping and tying techniques, often creating delicate, organic forms from simple materials. Asawa's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including a major retrospective at SFMOMA.
Early Life and Influences:
Asawa was born in California to Japanese immigrant parents.
She experienced the Japanese American internment camps during World War II, which profoundly impacted her artistic development.
While incarcerated, she began taking art classes and later studied at Black Mountain College, an experimental art school.
At Black Mountain, she was influenced by notable artists and teachers, including Josef Albers and R. Buckminster Fuller.
Artistic Career and Legacy:
Asawa's signature wire sculptures are characterized by their organic forms, intricate details, and sense of lightness and transparency.
She experimented with a variety of materials, including wire, paper, and clay.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including SFMOMA and MoMA.
Asawa was also a dedicated educator and arts advocate, playing a significant role in the development of the San Francisco School of the Arts.
Her legacy includes a large collection of sculptures, drawings, paintings, and other works of art.
A major retrospective exhibition, "Ruth Asawa: Retrospective," was presented at SFMOMA in 2025, showcasing her extensive body of work.
- Creator:Ruth Asawa (1926, American)
- Creation Year:1979
- Dimensions:Height: 6.25 in (15.88 cm)Width: 5.25 in (13.34 cm)Depth: 0.125 in (3.18 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:very good condition with natural and normal oxidation of bronze - natural/organic color change of patina.
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1745216382692
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