Everything about Eva Hesse totally explained
» For German author, publisher, see Eva Hesse (author) (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.
Early life
She 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. Living in
England for a while, the family emigrated to
New York City in 1939. They settled in
Manhattan's
Washington Heights.
Career
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.. Upon returning to New York she made friends with many young artists. In 1961, 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 of New York in
Woodstock, New York. There Hesse made her first three dimensional piece: a costume for the Happening. 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.
The couple—whose marriage was coming apart—lived and worked in an abandoned textile mill in the
Ruhr region of Germany for about a year during 1964-1965. Hesse wasn't happy to be back in Germany, but 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, with playful 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.
She was 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 1966). 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 showed at the
Whitney Museum in the 1969 exhibit "Anti-Illusion: Process/Materials". the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002),
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.]
Further Information
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