Artist Information
Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a Jewish German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered the post-minimal art movement in the 1960s. At Yale University, Hesse studied painting under Joseph Albers and was heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism. After receiving a B.A. from Yale, she returned to New York and became friends with many minimalist artists including Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd and Yayoi Kusama. She maintained close relationship with Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson and Lucy Lippard.

Artwork Information
Eva Hesse’s early work (1960-65) consisted of abstract drawings and painting. As the artist is most well known for her sculptures, her drawings are often regarded as preliminary steps to her later works. Hesse’s artwork frequently employs multiple forms of similar shape organized together in grid structures or clusters.

This work was created during the crucial, transformative period of Hesse’s oeuvre when she produced mostly drawings, collages, and significantly, her first sculptural efforts. In her initial works produced in Germany from June to November 1964, the spatial arrangements of Hesse’s images are mostly dissolved. Whereas her drawings of the previous year were characterized by density and a horror vacui or fear of emptiness, the space in the work now opens and moves towards an airy lightness, almost reminiscent of Kandinsky and Surrealist Automatism. Things, figures and nonsense objects that are floating through space, in accordance to the principles of chance, concentrate into clusters of energies. Centrifugal and centripetal forces alternate in various spaces while the outer rim of the pictures is washed over by biomorphic parts, odd appliances and figural shapes. The tinting is restrained, though sometimes one comes across points of condensed color.