Description
| Summary: | "The work of American artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) is brought into brilliant focus in this definitive book, originally published to accompany the first complete retrospective of Asawa's career, organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2006. This new edition features an expanded collection of essays and a detailed illustrated chronology that explore Asawa's fascinating life and her lasting contributions to American art. Beginning with her earliest works-drawings and paintings created in the 1940s while studying at Black Mountain College-this volume traces Asawa's flourishing career in San Francisco and her trajectory as a pioneering modernist sculptor who is recognized internationally for her innovative wire sculptures, public commissions, and activism on behalf of public arts education. Through her lifelong experimentations with wire, especially its capacity to balance open and closed forms, Asawa invented a powerful new vocabulary that contributed a unique perspective to the field of twentieth-century abstract sculpture. Working in a variety of nontraditional media, Asawa performed a series of remarkable metamorphoses, leading viewers into a deeper awareness of natural forms by revealing their structural properties. Through her art, Asawa transfigured the commonplace into metaphors for life processes themselves. The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa establishes the importance of Asawa's work within a larger cultural context of artists who redefined art as a way of thinking and acting in the world, rather than as merely a stylistic practice."
"Through her innovative experimentations across media, Ruth Asawa (American, 1926-2013) invented a powerful vocabulary that brought a unique perspective to the field of modern abstract art. Her use of nontraditional materials, such as wire, resulted in work that fosters a deeper awareness of natural forms by revealing their structural properties and transfigures the commonplace into metaphors for life processes. This revised edition of The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air features enlightening new essays and an expanded chronology that explore Asawa's fascinating life and her artistic legacy. Replete with more than fifty new images, the volume traces Asawa's development into a pioneering modernist sculptor--from her early works on paper created at Black Mountain College in the 1940s to the refinement of her signature looped-wire sculptural technique in San Francisco over the course of her career. This book also examines Asawa's public commissions and activism through arts education to reveal how she redefined art beyond stylistic practice, as a way of thinking and acting in the world."
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| Item Description: | Originally published on the occasion of the exhibition at the de Young, November 18, 2006-January 28, 2007, and at the American National Museum, Los Angeles, March 10-May 27, 2007. |
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| Physical Description: | 329 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits, facsimiles, photographs ; 28 cm |
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| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 312-316) and index. |
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| ISBN: | 9780520304840
0520304845 |
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| Language: | Text in American English. |
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