Ruth Asawa, ‘Untitled S.391,’ estimated at $200,000-$300,000. Image courtesy of Fine Estate, Inc. and LiveAuctioneers
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – In its Sunday, May 21 auction, Fine Estate, Inc. will offer something very special indeed: a wire sculpture by the late Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa. Known as Untitled S.391, it is estimated at $200,000-$300,000. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
Near the end of World War II, while she was still interned at Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas, Asawa (1926-2013) was given permission to enroll in Black Mountain College. There, her creativity flourished under the guidance of Josef Albers and other teachers. She became fascinated by form and repetition, making her first baskets in the early 1950s. She transformed her earlier interest in conventional drawing by forming wire as if she were drawing in space. Today, her larger wire sculptures can command as much as five million dollars.
Asawa is in every way an indomitable American, having been born in 1926 into a family with seven children that lived on a modest farm in Norwalk, California. She worked through every adversity, never complaining, and seems to have kept in mind the pursuit of her creativity, the organization and launch of programs through which others might find artistic expression, and her family.
Her artistic legacy can be seen hanging in the Educational Tower of the De Young Museum; on permanent display and easily visited at no cost to visitors, because Asawa believed that art should be accessible to all. Since its opening in 1968, tourists visiting Ghirardelli Square have been delighted by Mermaids, an Asawa sculpture of a nursing mermaid surrounded by various aspects of aquatic life. Asawa was commissioned to create more than 10 major works of art intended for public display. In addition to her public art projects, she helped to start 50 different school art programs and was a member of the San Francisco Arts Council.
Asawa’s Untitled S. 391 is a looped wire sculpture of six interlocking brass wire trumpets, and was fashioned circa 1958. It has been authenticated and is listed in the Asawa database. From some angles, the gold-colored piece looks like an exotic sea creature; from others, it resembles a corset.
Untilted S.391 is fresh to market, and has never been offered for sale or publicly exhibited. In the early 1960s, Asawa – a working artist and mother who was not always flush with cash – bartered this sculpture for piano lessons for three of her six children. The piano teacher, Florence Oertel Hartford, hung the piece in her home studio, where it remained until her passing. The artwork descended in the family to the current owners, who have consigned it to auction.
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