Ruth Asawa: The Tamarind Prints – Hardcover Book

 

In autumn 1965, the artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) produced a remarkable suite of fifty-four prints at the storied Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. Asawa, well-known for her intricate looped-wire sculptures, was new to lithography, but she eagerly immersed herself in the workshop’s atmosphere of creativity and collaboration. The resulting works, strikingly varied and experimental, are published together for the first time in this special volume. Vibrant portraits of the artist’s parents and children alternate with renderings of colorful blooms from her San Francisco garden, linear explorations of desert flora, and abstract compositions of crackled, veined fields and pools of ink. Unique within Asawa’s renowned and wide-ranging body of work, the suite is a testament to the beauty and expansiveness of her art, which flowed from an endless fascination with materials, forms, and relationships.