Eva Hesse was an American sculptor and painter, who represented Postminimalism movement. She made her works, using such materials, as latex, fiberglass and plastic. Eva originally pursued a career in commercial textile design in New York City, but her practice as an expressionist painter led her to experiment with industrial and every-day, or "found" materials, such as rope, string, wire, rubber and fiberglass.
Background
Eva Hesse was born on January 11, 1936 in Hamburg, Germany. She was a daughter of Wilhelm Hesse and Ruth Hesse. Family life under the Nazis was difficult for the Hesses. Eva's father was barred from his law practice, and her mother frequently suffered bouts of depression. In December 1938, Eva and her older sister, Helen Hesse Charas, were both sent to the Netherlands. Six months later, the family reunited and settled down in England. In 1939, they moved to the United States.
After arriving in New York, Ruth's depression worsened. In 1944, Eva's parents marriage ended in divorce, and two years later, in 1946, her mother committed suicide. Eva was then ten years old.
Education
A sensitive child with a strong attachment to her parents, Eva was deeply affected by the tragic loss of her mother. Nonetheless, she performed well in her classes and was a popular student at New York's School of Industrial Art (present-day the High School of Art and Design). In 1952, she entered the Pratt Institute, where she remained until 1953.
At the age of eighteen, Hesse attended Art Students League of New York. During the period from 1954 to 1957, she studied at Cooper Union. Some time later, Eva continued her studies at Yale University and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959. While at Yale, Hesse studied under Josef Albers and was heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism.
At the age of eighteen, Eva Hesse started her career as an intern at Seventeen magazine. After graduation from Yale University, she returned to New York City, where she befriended such artists, as Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Yayoi Kusama and others. In 1962, Hesse married Tom Doyle, a sculptor, and in 1964, the couple settled down in Germany. Hesse and Doyle, whose marriage was falling apart, lived and worked in an abandoned textile mill in the Ruhr region of Germany for about a year. In Germany, Eva created her first sculpture, entitled "Ring Around Arosie". Since that time, sculpture became the main focus of her work.
In 1965, Hesse left for New York City, where she started to experiment with latex, fiberglass and plastic. The same year, her first solo show of sculpture was presented at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf. For the next 5 years, Eva worked non-stop on an impressive body of work, completing dozens of major sculptural works and hundreds of works on paper. Although, she sold little, critical attention was paid and she was showing often and in excellent venues. Eva started to gain recognition by the late 1960's, with solo shows at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and inclusion in many important group exhibitions.
Also, during the period from 1968 to 1970, Hesse held the post of a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Two years after her untimely death, the Guggenheim Museum held a retrospective of her work, which was the first such exhibition, organized to honor a female artist.
Quotations:
"Don't ask what the work is. Rather, see what the work does."
"I would like the work to be non-work. This means that it would find its way beyond my preconceptions...It is the unknown quantity from which and where I want to go. As a thing, an object, it accedes to its non-logical self. It is something, it is nothing."
"I think art is a total thing. A total person giving a contribution. It is an essence, a soul.. In my inner soul art and life are inseparable."
"Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word."
"Chaos can be structured as non-chaos. That we know from Jackson Pollock."
"I am interested in solving an unknown factor of art and an unknown factor of life."
"I have a confidence in my understanding of formal aesthetics and I don't want to be aware of it or make that my problem."
"First feel sure of idea, then the execution will be easier."
Connections
Eva married Tom Doyle in 1962. Some time later, in 1966, the couple divorced.