Gwyneth Paltrow's ‘Ruth Asawa’ Sculpture Revealed To Not Be Actual Asawa

This week, Architectural Digest took readers on a trip inside actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s home, not knowing the story would soon go viral for the wrong reasons.

A tweet by New York Times design critic Alexandra Lange pointed out what looked to be a Ruth Asawa sculpture in the home, which hung next to an Ed Ruscha painting. However, the piece has now been revealed to not be an actual work by the artist.

“This work is not by Ruth Asawa,” confirmed a spokesperson for David Zwirner, who represents the artist’s estate, as per ARTnews.

It appears that the magazine has since replaced the original photograph with a cropped version that doesn’t feature the sculpture, and has omitted any mention of the artwork in the article.

According to Artnet News, it is now known that the artist behind the piece was actually D’Lisa Creager, who claims to have been taught the wire looping technique by Asawa’s daughter, Aiko Cueno. 

While it’s unclear how much Paltrow paid for Creager’s work, her highest auction bid stands at US$35,000, a rather far cry from Asawa’s top price of US$5.38 million.

Was the false attribution just a simple misunderstanding, or did Paltrow pass off the lookalike sculpture as a real Asawa? Guess we’ll never know.

Y’all, they have edited the photo and removed the caption reference to Asawa — I think this actually *is a copy* as many have been saying in my mentions https://t.co/jvYLMPzf9g https://t.co/eR6LRHqwnP

— Alexandra Lange (@LangeAlexandra) February 2, 2022

[via ARTnews and Artnet News, cover image via Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock.com]