Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air

"This exhibition of approximately 54 sculptures and 45 works on paper, with additional documentary source materials including notebooks and vintage photographs by Imogen Cunningham, constitutes the first complete retrospective of Ruth Asawa’s enduring and richly varied career. Drawing from works in Asawa’s extensive archive as well as important loan contributions, the exhibition begins with her earliest works, drawing and paintings created in the 1940s at Black Mountain College, the famous experimental art school in North Carolina. It goes on to highlight her signature wire sculptures that formed the visual vocabulary of looped and tied open forms with which she continued to experiment throughout her career beginning in 1949. Chosen as a United States representative for the 1955 Sao Paulo Biennial, Asawa received national renown for these daring sculptures in the 1950s and 1960s." -excerpt taken from De Young website

I visited the de Young a few months ago, and the museum had already begun displaying some of Asawa's sculptures, though not as part of the main collections or exhibits. They really were magnificent to look at, what with the play of lights and shadows. The lines, contours, shapes are really mind-bending in some ways, and you can't help but want to touch them.... something about the connection between the visual and the tactile... all those synapses firing at the sight of those contours in the air...