Eva Hesse
Born 1936, Hamburg, Germany
Died 1970, New York
1952–1953 Pratt Institute, Brooklyn
1954–1957 Cooper Union, New York
1959 BA Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Selected museum exhibitions: Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio (2020); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin (2016); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Madrid (2010); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); Jewish Museum, New York (2006); Tate Modern, London (2002); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (1992); Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1985); Grey Art Gallery, New York University (1982); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1979); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1972); Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (1965)
Selected honors: Cooper Union Hall of Fame (2009), Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award (1984); Yale-Norfolk Fellowship (1957)
Selected public collections: Art Institute of Chicago; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Arts; Jewish Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Museum Wiesbaden, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art
Created the year after Eva Hesse graduated from Yale University, this untitled work from 1960 anticipated themes and approaches that she would develop over the next decade in her sculpture. An experiment in abstraction with suggestions of the human figure, this work features her use of dramatic tonal contrasts and gestural marks that form bent lines and rounded forms related to those she would employ over the next few years. In a diary entry from October 1960, Hesse wrote: “I will paint against every rule I or others have invisibly placed…I should like to achieve free, spontaneous painting delineating a powerful, strong structured image. One must be possible with the other. A difficult problem in itself but one which I shall achieve.”