Interlude - Ruth Asawa [1926-2013]

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Following a stretch at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Ruth Asawa Retrospective exhibit moves on to the New York City Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) from October 19, 2025 – Feb. 7, 2026. However, two of her best known public works, The Ghirardelli Square Fountain and the Grand Hyatt Hotel Fountain, remain in San Francisco,  California. The city* where she lived and worked all her life as an artist and community activist, raising six children with her husband, Albert Lanier, an architect.  

Best known for her suspended, knotted-wire sculptures that transparently defy gravity, and whose shadows are as interesting as the interconnected geometry of the pieces, Asawa’s commissioned San Francisco work was initially quite controversial. Indeed, the Ghirardelli Square Fountain depicts  two mermaids, one of which is breast-feeding her infant mermaid. The sculpture is named Andrea's Fountain, after one of Asawa's friends who was nursing at the time, and whose body she cast in plaster, to then better sculpt in wax, before casting in bronze. The fountain includes whimsical frogs that Asawa's own children also sculpted. The fountain was installed during the night to bypass conflict with the landscape architect who designed the square, and who wanted a more 'abstract' fountain design.  

Criticized as alternatively too decorative or too domestic, Asawa was also targeted for being Japanese-American, female, and from San Francisco, far from the East coast establishment. Nonetheless, Asawa was an enormously productive artist, and a beloved community activist in San Francisco. She found her voice, and her art work endured, celebrated both during her life time, and now posthumously. 

Below, an image of the landmark San Francisco Ghirardelli Square Andrea's Fountain, commissioned in 1968.  

Note

*Asawa and her husband chose to live in San Francisco, a city that would generously welcome her Japanese ancestry and bi-racial marriage. This choice came after forced internment in a barn at the Santa Anita Racetrack, at age 16 during world war II, together with thousands of other undesired people of Japanese descent, living in the United States. Despite the hardship, Asawa is said to have made the most of her internment, choosing to study painting for more than six hours a day under the supervision of Japanese Disney animators, who were also interned. In particular, she studied with Tom Okamoto, a landscape artist. Studying art contrasted with the farm work she had always performed with her family, and it confirmed her artistic talent. In Asawa's own words, regarding her internment: 

"I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am."

References

Ruth Asawa

https://ruthasawa.com

https://ruthasawa.com/life/ (time line)

SFMOMA

https://www.sfmoma.org/visit/

NYC MOMA

https://www.moma.org