Flowers IV
1965
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
lithograph (stone) in black on German Etching paper
Dimensions
image: 18.7 x 21 cm (7 3/8 x 8 1/4 in.) sheet: 27.9 x 28.2 cm (11 x 11 1/8 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Dorothy J. and Benjamin B. Smith
Accession Number
1983.18.168
Art Historical Context
Ruth Asawa’s *Flowers IV* (1965) the quiet elegance of nature through the precise medium of lithography. Created on stone and printed in rich black ink on German Etching paper, the work belongs to a portfolio that allowed Asawa to explore organic forms with the same sensitivity she brought to her celebrated wire sculptures. The modest scale—roughly seven by eight inches for the image—invites close looking, rewarding viewers with delicate lines and subtle tonal variations that evoke the fragility and structure of real blossoms. Asawa, a Japanese-American artist deeply influenced by her studies...
About the Artist
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), born Ruth Aiko Asawa in Norwalk, California, as the fourth of seven children to Japanese immigrant farmers Umakichi and Haru Asawa, grew up on a truck farm where she honed her artistic eye sketching natural forms in the sand. During World War II, her family endured separation under Japanese American internment; while most were held at Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas—wh...