“Vocabulary of My Sculpture”
“The work is one which dictates a way of growing and the more one learns about this way of growing the more possibilities are opened up for the creating of sculpture peculiar to the process.” —Ruth Asawa
The works in this section offer a partial inventory of the vast array of sculptural forms Asawa invented throughout the 1950s using industrially sourced wire that she looped by hand—what she described in 1955 as the “vocabulary of my sculpture.” These forms by turns layer, nest, interlock, ruffle, and cascade, creating continuous surfaces that delineate volume while remaining porous to surrounding space. Though their composite structures are symmetrical and balanced, the viewer’s experience of their shapes can change depending on vantage point and proximity to other works.
Asawa used her looped-wire technique to make “sculpture that would itself have a form and volume, whose silhouette would also have volume, and sculptures whose shadow would have volume.” Most of the works in this section were chosen by Asawa to be exhibited in a sequence of solo shows at Peridot Gallery in New York in the 1950s, which introduced her art to a broader audience. Considered together, they shed light on the iterative nature of the artist’s practice.