Ruth Asawa, the art of weaving in a major exhibition in Bilbao

Ruth Asawa; Senza titolo (AB.029, Forma continua all’interno di una forma), 1956; collezione privata; © 2026 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., per gentile concessione di David Zwirner

Asawa's is characterised by an art that challenges the distinctions between abstraction and representation, integrating her entire life as an artist, teacher and advocate of the arts into her poetics: a path that she would describe asthe lexicon of my sculpture, and that among the many sources of inspiration she counts the weaving art of the Mexican basket weavers, which she encountered on a trip as a young girl.

A sinistra: Ruth Asawa; Senza titolo (S.046a-d, Gruppo sospeso di quattro, forme a due lobi), 1961; Collezione di Diana Nelson e John Atwater, donazione promessa al San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © 2026 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., per gentile concessione di David Zwirner; foto: Laurence Cuneo. A destra: Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.363, Freestanding Basket), ca. 1948; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina, Black Mountain College Collection, acquisto del museo con fondi forniti dal 2010 Collectors’ Circle e fondi aggiuntivi forniti da Frances Myers; © 2026 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., per gentile concessione di David Zwirner; foto per gentile concessione di Christie’s

His bound wire works inspired by nature, from clay and bronze casts to origami, paintings to drawings, sketchbooks to prints are an invitation to meaningful contemplation of how disparate elements interact in a composition, which in turn interacts with its surroundings.

In my opinion, the word that perhaps best sums up Asawa's poetics is 'interconnection'...

"Interconnection is a key word to describe Ruth Asawa's work," replies curator Cara Manes, "because for her, creating art and living life were really the same thing.

Based on his insights is a trip to Mexico, is that correct?

"When Ruth Asawa returned from a very important trip to Mexico in 1947, she adapted a technique from the wire basket art that she had observed there into a sculptural medium. And what he did was radically change the course of art history by creating sculptures that could delineate or delineate a volume without assuming a mass. And he did this by creating a continuous surface composed of a single line of looped wire that interconnects with itself to form a sphere that folds back on itself to form an open sphere, which in turn folds back on itself to form another sphere around itself, and so on; until he creates these forms that can almost be described as air containers and that speak, and really challenge our conventional notions of positive and negative space,

of the inner and outer form and mass'.

Ruth Asawa; Senza titolo (S.451, struttura a filo metallico fissata alla parete, con centro aperto e sei rami ispirata alla natura), 1965 circa; collezione privata; © 2026 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., per gentile concessione di David Zwirner; foto per gentile concessione di David Zwirner

Divided into ten sections spanning a career spanning six decades, this ambitious retrospective is a collaboration between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao .

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, curated by Janet Bishop, Chief Curator, Thomas Weisel Family, SFMOMA, and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, in collaboration with Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, until 13 September 2026