Sculptor, born in Hamburg, N Germany. Her family emigrated to the USA in 1939, and settled in New York City. She studied at the Pratt Institute, New York, and at Cooper Union. From 1965 she worked in a variety of unusual materials, including rubber, plastic, string, and polythene. These were made into hauntingly bizarre objects designed to rest on the floor or against a wall or even be suspended from the ceiling. Her unconventional techniques and imaginative work exerted a strong influence on later sculptors.
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. Living in England for a while, the family emigrated to New York City in 1939.
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 August 1962 Eva Hesse and Tom Doyle participated in an Allan Kaprow Happening at the Art Students League 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 was not happy to be back in Germany. Hesse 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). In September 1968 Eva Hesse began teaching at the School of Visual Arts. There have been dozens of major posthumous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at The Guggenheim Museum (1972, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002), and the Jewish Museum of New York (2006).
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.
Hesse is one of a few artists who led the move from Minimalism to Postminimalism. Eva Hesse was for many artists and friends who knew her -- so charismatic that her memory remains simply unforgettable to this day. Four Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg.
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