Ruth Asawa Through Line

Asawa filled sheets of paper and notebooks with the Greek meander, a line that turns in on itself and uncoils again, repeating as it travels across the page. Drawing the meander requires careful calculation in order to ensure negative and positive spaces are treated equally, and Josef Albers assigned it as a lesson in "making the eye move ahead of the pencil." The mental, visual, and manual challenges presented by the meander held lasting appeal for Asawa.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Asawa's attention to pattern dovetailed with her material experimentation in her marker drawings. She made small incisions into felt-tipped pens so that, when put to paper, the grooved implements yielded groups of parallel lines with each stroke. Asawa used these modified tools to render rolling waves, San Francisco row houses, or quilted blankets that fill the page in a whorl of tessellated ink marks. Her interest in rhythmic pattern and allover composition informed her commercial designs for home decor, one of which has been produced in the galleries as wallpaper for the first time.