- Eva Hesse
Infobox Artist
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name = Eva Hesse
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birthdate = 1936
location =Hamburg, Germany
deathdate = 1970
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nationality = American
field =Sculpture
training =Yale University , studied withJosef Albers atYale ,Cooper Union ,Pratt Institute ,Art Students League of New York
movement =Postminimalism
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influenced = Pioneer ofFeminism in the Art world
awards =Eva Hesse (
January 11 ,1936 -May 29 ,1970 ), was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such aslatex ,fiberglass , andplastic s.Early life
Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in
Hamburg ,Germany . [SFMOMA exhibit notes, 2002 for Hamburg; Danto 2006, p.32 for family being observant Jews.] When Hesse was two years old, her parents, hoping to flee fromNazi Germany , sent Eva and her older sister tothe Netherlands . She and her sister were separated from their parents for a few months before they were reunited. Living inEngland for a while, the family emigrated toNew York City in 1939. [Lippard 1992, p. 6 and in the Chronology: THE ARTIST'S LIFE, p. 218.] They settled inManhattan 's Washington Heights. Danto 2006, p.32.]Career
After graduating from New York's
School of Industrial Art in 1952, [Lippard 1992, p.218] Hesse studied at New York'sPratt Institute (1952–1953) andCooper Union (1954–1957), then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1957–1959), where she studied underJosef Albers and received aB.F.A. .SFMOMA exhibit notes, 2002.] 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 anAllan Kaprow Happening at theArt Students League of New York inWoodstock, New York . There Hesse made her first three dimensional piece: a costume for the Happening. [Lippard 1992, p. 21, 218.] In 1963 Eva Hesse had a one-person show of works on paper at the Allan Stone Gallery on New York'sUpper East Side . [Lippard 1992, p. 219]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 was not 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 , andplastic s. Danto, 2006, p.33.]She was associated with the mid-1960s
postminimal anti-form trend in sculpture, participating in New York exhibits such as "Eccentric Abstraction" and "Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism" (both 1966). In September 1968 Eva Hesse began teaching at theSchool of Visual Arts . [Lippard 1992, p.220] Her only one-person show of sculpture in her lifetime was "Chain Polymers" at theFischbach Gallery on W. 57th Street in New York in November 1968;Danto, 2006, p.30.] her large piece "Expanded Expansion" showed at theWhitney 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, [Lippard 1992, p. 5, 128-129, 138, 180, 182.] theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002), The Drawing Center in New York (2006) 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." [Danto, 2006, p.30–31.]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.
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