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Lot Essay
Ruth Asawa began experimenting with wire after a transformative visit to Mexico in the summer of 1947. Captivated by the crocheted baskets of galvanized wire used for eggs and other produce, she began exploring the medium in her own art. While her tactile, interwoven surfaces derive from her studies in design, the structural form is rooted in her childhood.
Asawa often executed her work in her home surrounded by her six children. As an artist for whom life intertwined with art, it is only fitting that it was a gift of friends that inspired her to explore the tied wire methodology. “Based on a binary branching design of the skeleton dessert plant that her friends Paul and Virgina Hassel brought her in 1962 [and] unable to make a two dimensional drawing that satisfied her, Asawa shaped it in wire to understand its structure and then found that she was able to render its form easily” (D. Cornell et al. The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2006, p. 160).
Asawa often executed her work in her home surrounded by her six children. As an artist for whom life intertwined with art, it is only fitting that it was a gift of friends that inspired her to explore the tied wire methodology. “Based on a binary branching design of the skeleton dessert plant that her friends Paul and Virgina Hassel brought her in 1962 [and] unable to make a two dimensional drawing that satisfied her, Asawa shaped it in wire to understand its structure and then found that she was able to render its form easily” (D. Cornell et al. The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2006, p. 160).