Ruth Asawa Through Line

In the summer of 1946, Asawa enrolled at Black Mountain College, an experimental liberal arts school in rural North Carolina. There she studied with avant-garde artists, choreographers, and thinkers, including Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham, and Buckminster Fuller, and felt as though "another world opened up." Through drawing exercises, she explore economy of line and honed her hand-eye coordination, while careful observation of ordinary objects around her—from leaves and thorns to Jell-O molds and Wonder Bread packaging—offered studies in color relationships and the play of positive and negative space.

Albers's coursework in color, painting, and design proved particularly influential, and Asawa credited the Bauhaus artist and educator not only with teaching her how to draw but "how to see." She took his classes multiple times, returning to certain exercises and forms. Repetition determined the cyclical rhythm of her lifelong art practice, and many of the techniques and motifs seen here reappear throughout the exhibition.