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.
