With its overlapping loops and circles, Desert Flower suggests a bird's eye view of one of the transparent wire sculptures that Asawa had begun making in the 1950s, such as the example on view in this gallery. It is one of fifty-four lithographs that Asawa made at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1964-65. Tamarind, founded in Los Angeles in 1960 by the artist June Wayne, was instrumental in bringing about a renaissance of printmaking in the United States. Among the many artists Wayne invited to make prints at Tamarind in the 1960s were an unusually high number of women, including Asawa, as well as Anni Albers, Gego, Eleanore Mikus, Louise Nevelson, and Hedda Sterne.

Gallery label from

Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, April 19 - August 13, 2017.

Medium Lithograph
Dimensions composition (irreg.): 17 7/16 × 17 1/2" (44.3 × 44.4 cm); sheet: 18 9/16 × 18 9/16" (47.1 × 47.2 cm)
Publisher Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc., Los Angeles
Printer Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc., Los Angeles
Edition proof outside the edition of 10
Credit Gift of Kleiner, Bell & Co.
Object number 1591.1967
Department Drawings and Prints

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Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa

American, 1926–2013 58 works online

Whether it’s a craft or whether it’s art. That is a definition that people put on things,” artist, activist, and educator Ruth Asawa has said.

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