For beloved modernist sculptor Ruth Asawa, the admiration “one-of-a-kind” now takes on new meaning. Last month, a crater on Mercury was named after the late artist, making her one of a rare group of fewer than 30 female artists whose legacies are etched into our solar system, including Augustus Augusta Savage, Tarsila do Amoral and Dorothea Lange.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially named the crater “Asawa” on November 14, but the news came after American curator and art writer Helen Molesworth Officially exposed. Ruth Asawa: A Life’s Work (2019), shared the tidbit in an Instagram post earlier this week.
According to existing planetary feature naming categories, Craters on Mercury refers to visual, performing, and literary artists who “have made outstanding or fundamental contributions in their respective fields and have been recognized in the history of art for more than 50 years.” important person”.
in an email allergicTenielle Gaither, leader of the Planetary Naming Dictionary project, explains that a proposal is underway Includes the names of seven other craters on Earth. They are Peruvian painter Julia Codesido; Chinese ink painter Wu Shujuan; Palestinian artist Jumana El Husseini; Uruguayan artist María Freire; Egyptian painter Tahia Halim; 20th-century Ukrainian painter Kateryna Bilokur; and American mystery writer Ukraine Ursula K. Le Guin.
As an artist, Asawa is best known for her biomorphic loop sculptures, which feature repeating and enveloping structures, often suspended in the air, in a manner that provokes questions about line and form, volume and negative space, interior and exterior. questioning the differences between them. Light and shadow. She is also remembered for her work on paper, paintings, and prints, as well as for public commissions throughout California.
Asawa was an ardent advocate of art education throughout his life. She co-founded Alvarado School Arts Workshop and has advocated for arts programs and community engagement in schools and beyond through her public service on the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, and National Endowment for the Arts. She was also instrumental in the development of the Art Institute, a public high school for the visual and performing arts in San Francisco founded in 1982.
“Ruth Asawa was an innovative artist who had a lasting impact on postwar American art and the community of her adopted hometown of San Francisco,” said Henry Weverka is one of Asawa’s 10 grandchildren and chairman of the estate office that manages her estate. She often compared her best-known loop sculptures to “space paintings” and considered herself a “citizen of the universe,” so it seemed fitting to associate her name with outer space.
While Asawa’s crater of honor on Mercury may be the most otherworldly, it is just one of many recent honors. The artist was recently posthumously awarded the 2022 National Medal of Arts, and the U.S. Postal Service paid tribute to her wire sculptures with a set of 10 permanent stamps during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. In 2010, the Art Institute was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco Art Institute to honor her contributions to the fields of art and art education.
“We hope that future generations of scientists studying Mercury will take the time to learn about Asawa’s life and work, as well as her immense contributions to art and art education on Earth,” Wewoka concluded.
