CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/4/2025

The experimental 1965 Tamarind Lithography Workshop prints of Ruth Asawa

“Desert Plant” (1965) is from Ruth Asawa: The Tamarind Prints, published as a gem-like accompaniment to the full career retrospective on view now at MoMA. Collecting the entire portfolio of 54 prints made by Asawa during a 1965 residency at the renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, which have never been published before as a complete series, this elegant 64-page hardcover has been produced in celebration of the artist’s 2026 centennial. “Each material has a nature of its own,” Asawa is quoted in the book, “and by combining it and putting it next to another material, you change or give personality to it without destroying either one.… It’s the same thing that you don’t change a person’s personality, but when you combine them with other people, other personalities, they take on another quality.… The intent is not to change them, but to bring out another part of them.”