"Ruth Asawa will be remembered for the extraordinary wire sculptures that so beautifully interweave nature and culture," said Timothy Burgard, curator of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He characterized her "as a pioneering post-WWII modernist whose works have transcended the multiple barriers she faced as an Asian-American woman artist working with traditional 'craft' materials and techniques. She lived to see all of these confining categories challenged and redefined."

Asawa was born on Jan. 24, 1926 in Norwalk (Los Angeles County), the fourth among seven children of immigrant truck farmers whom state law prohibited from owning land or applying for citizenship.

During childhood Asawa did farm work with her family and attended both public school and a "Japanese cultural school," where she learned calligraphy and her parents' native language. Her teachers appreciated her drawing ability.

In 1942, the federal government began to implement the executive order mandating internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Asawa's father was separated for six years from the rest of her family, who were housed initially in the Santa Anita racetrack stables and eventually at an internment camp in Rohwer, Ark.

Asawa continued drawing and learned as she could from older internee artists. She completed high school in the camp and won a scholarship to Milwaukee State Teachers College.

After anti-Japanese prejudice blocked her path to mandatory teaching credentials, Asawa instead entered Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an educational experiment that in its brief life span became a hotbed of artistic innovation. It attracted future luminaries such as Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Franz Kline, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Merce Cunningham and Bauhaus exile Josef Albers who, improbably, acted as Asawa's mentor.

Asawa left Black Mountain after three years, emboldened to devote her life to art. She had met there, and soon married, architect and designer Albert Lanier (1927-2008), with whom she would have six children.

She served on the San Francisco Arts Commission and on the board of trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She received honorary doctorates from San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts.

Ruth AsawaRuth Asawa

San Francisco Artist Ruth Asawa Dies