Eva Hesse

For German author, publisher, see Eva Hesse (author) (de) (born 1925)

Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 - May 29, 1970), was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. An early and key figure of post-Minimalism in the United States and one of the most influential artists of the postwar era, Eva Hesse created paintings, sculptures, and drawings that are striking for their poetic beauty and individuality. Building on the influences of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptualism, and Minimalism with her own distinctiveness, Hesse challenged disciplinary boundaries of both form and function in the field of modern art.

Her work has come to be affiliated primarily with process art, a term originating in the 1960s that implies an emphasis on the physical properties of materials and the manner of applying them.

Early life

Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany. When Hesse was two years old, her parents, hoping to flee from Nazi Germany, sent Eva and her older sister to the Netherlands. She and her sister were separated from their parents for a few months before they were reunited. After living in England for a short while, the family emigrated to New York City in 1939 where they settled in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood.

After graduating from New York's School of Industrial Art in 1952, Hesse studied at New York's Pratt Institute (1952–1953) and Cooper Union (1954–1957), then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1957–1959), where she studied under Josef Albers and received a B.F.A..

Career

In 1961 Hesse was included in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and the John Heller Gallery, New York That same year she met and married fellow sculptor Tom Doyle. In August 1962 Eva Hesse and Tom Doyle participated in an Allan Kaprow Happening at the Art Students League in Woodstock, New York. There Hesse made her first three dimensional piece: a costume made of chicken wire and soft jersey. In 1963 Eva Hesse had a one-person show of works on paper at the Allen Stone Gallery on New York's Upper East Side.

From 1964-1965 the couple lived and worked under the patronage of a texile manufacturer in an abandoned textile mill in the Ruhr region of Germany. There Hesse began sculpting with materials that had been left behind in the abandoned factory: first relief sculptures made of cloth-covered cord, electrical wire, and masonite. She gave her pieces whimsical titles like Eighter from Decatur and Oomamaboomba.

Returning to New York City in 1965 she began working in the materials that would become characteristic of her work: latex, fiberglass, and plastics.

Hesse became associated with the mid-1960s "anti-form" trend in sculpture, participating in New York exhibits such as "Eccentric Abstraction" and "Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism" (both in 1966). In September 1968 Eva Hesse began teaching at the School of Visual Arts. Her only one-person show of sculpture in her lifetime was "Chain Polymers" at the Fischbach Gallery on W. 57th Street in New York in November 1968; Her large piece Expanded Expansion was shown at the Whitney Museum in the 1969 exhibit "Anti-Illusion: Process/Materials".

There have been dozens of major posthumous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at The Guggenheim Museum (1972, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002), and the Jewish Museum of New York (2006).

Except for fiberglass, most of her favored materials age badly, so much of her work presents conservators with an enormous challenge. Arthur Danto, writing of the Jewish Museum's 2006 retrospective, refers to "the discolorations, the slackness in the membrane-like latex, the palpable aging of the material… Yet somehow the work does not feel tragic. Instead it is full of life, of eros, even of comedy… Each piece in the show vibrates with originality and mischief."

Eva Hesse Drawing highlights the crucial role drawing played in her artistic practice, which in turn gave way to an array of highly innovative techniques and styles that today still defy classification. As she commented in 1970: “I had a great deal of difficulty with painting but never with drawing. . . . The translation or transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious. . . . So I started working in relief and with line—using the cords and ropes that are now so commonly used.” Hesse’s custom of introducing sculptural materials into drawing and painting continues to influence the multidisciplinary work so prevalent in contemporary art practice.

In 1969 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her death in 1970 ended a career spanning only ten years.

Legacy

Her art is often viewed in light of all the painful struggles of her life including escaping the Nazis, her parents' divorce, the suicide of her mother when she was ten, her failed marriage and the death of her father. Danto describes her as "cop[ing] with emotional chaos by reinventing sculpture through aesthetic insubordination, playing with worthless material amid the industrial ruins of a defeated nation that, only two decades earlier, would have murdered her without a second thought." She also always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world.

Hesse is one of a few artists who led the move from Minimalism to Postminimalism. Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its "mirth and jokiness" and "unmistakable whiff of eroticism," its "nonmechanical repetition". She was influenced by and in turn, influenced many famous artists of the 1960s through today. Eva Hesse was for many artists and friends who knew her — so charismatic that her memory remains simply unforgettable to this day.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Eva Hesse. Da Capo Press, Inc. Lucy R. Lippard. illus. Trade Paper. (1992)
• Eva Hesse Sculpture. Timken Publishers, Inc. Bill Barrette. illus. Trade Paper. (1992)
• Eva Hesse Paintings, 1960-1964. Robert Miller Gallery. Max Kozloff. Edited by John Cheim and Nathan Kernan. illus. Trade Cloth. (1992)
• Four Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg. Michael Blackwood Productions, Inc. Color VHS 45 min.
• Busch, Julia M., A decade of sculpture: the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

References

• Danto, Arthur C., "All About Eva," The Nation, July 17/24, 2006, p. 30–34. Posted online June 28, 2006.
• Hopkins, David, After Modern Art: 1945-2000, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-284234-X
• Lippard Lucy R., EVA HESSE. 1992 Da Capo Press, Inc. illus. Trade Paper. 251p.
• SFMOMA | Exhibitions | Exhibition Overview | Eva Hesse (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art February 2, 2002 — May 19, 2002 exhibition). Accessed online 19 September 2006.

External links

• Dick, Leslie, X-TRA, 2002; "Eva Hesse: Random Notes", X-TRA, Retrieved July 24, 2007.

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