Every designer likes to think of themselves as original in some way, but I also like to consider my influences, who my predecessors are, and which of my contemporaries work in a similar vein. I like to do this with other trends and design themes, in order to get a better understanding of wh
Before her death at age 34 in 1970, the young sculptor created innovative work that was bold and material, but also mysterious, fragile, and sensuous.
photos by Henry Groskinsky source:life
Eva Hesse oil on masonite, no title, 1960 oil on canvas, no title, 1960 Contingent, polymer, 1968 Repetition ..., 1968 Eva Hesse was one of the great artists of the 1960s, and her major sculptural works stand out as singular achievements of that era. At once drawing on Minimalist strategies of repetition and seriality, and pushing nontraditional materials toward new modes of expression, Hesse created an art that evoked emotion, absence, and contingency. The large-scale sculptures she created in latex and fiberglass for her only solo sculpture exhibition, Chain Polymers at the Fischbach Gallery in November 1968, secured her reputation. Born in Hamburg in 1936, she and her older sister were sent to Holland on a children's train at the end of 1938. Their parents fled Nazi Germany two months later, and the family came to New York, where Hesse was raised in the German Jewish community of Washington Heights. She wanted to be an artist from an early age and studied at Pratt Institute of Design, the Cooper Union, and the Yale School of Art and Architecture. After completing her studies in 1959, Hesse returned to New York and pursued her art for just over a decade. From The Jewish Museum "The artist who did the most to humanize Minimalism without sentimentalizing it was Eva Hesse. Dying of brain cancer at thirty-four, an age at which most artist's careers are barely under way, she left a truncated body of work but one of remarkable power: an instrument of feeling that spoke of an inner life, sometimes fraught with anxiety... "Spurred by the examples of Jean Dubuffet Joseph Beuys, Claes Oldenburg.... She never wanted to see her work smugly categorized as 'women's art.' Quite the contrary; Hesse wanted it to join the general discourse of modern images, uncramped by niches of gender or race. 'The best way to beat discrimination in art is by art,' she brusquely replied to a list of questions a journalist sent her. 'Excellence has no sex.' From" American Visions" by Robert Hughes In 1967, Hesse discovered latex (a material she knew would eventually deteriorate), fiberglass and polyester resin. Hesse loved the irregular shapes, surfaces and translucency that these materials produced. Hesse often created elaborate, handmade pieces involving obsessive repetition. However, she was not interested in certain technical aspects of sculpture. For many of her later pieces made of metal and fiberglass, she left the fabrication to outside companies. In 1961, she met and married sculptor Tom Doyle.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: During the late 1960s, it was popular to remove the appearance of the artist's hand from the work. For Hesse, she did so more for practical reasons than intellectual ones. During this period, when she was creating some of her most well known pieces, she developed brain tumors and continued to work until she became too ill. She then directed assistants to create and install her work. Hesse died in 1970 at the age of thirty four.
Any of you who know me personally would know that I have a monumental artist-crush on Eva Hesse. Her body of work is incredible, and constantly influences my aesthetic choices as an artist. I adore...
Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and President Marc Payot
Despite being a craft dating back over 30,000 years, fiber work only started to get sculpturally experimental in a serious way in the 1960s and 70s.
“I have been concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female.” Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke used everything from rope to liquid latex to create a new erotic language.
A new exhibition focuses on Hesse's works on paper, and the way they demonstrate the role of drawing in the famed sculptor's process.
Eva Hesse, German-born American painter and sculptor known for using unusual materials such as rubber tubing, fibreglass, synthetic resins, cord, cloth, and wire. Hesse had a prolific yet short career, and her influence since her death at age 34 has been widespread. Born into a German Jewish
Every designer likes to think of themselves as original in some way, but I also like to consider my influences, who my predecessors are, and which of my contemporaries work in a similar vein. I like to do this with other trends and design themes, in order to get a better understanding of wh
Telling the story of Eva Hesse's life and work presents one major challenge: as a narrative arc, it is necessarily truncated.
Eva Hesse, view in studio with Untitled (7 poles). (bron: Columbia University)
“Yo recuerdo que quería llegar al no-arte, no-connotativo, no-antropomórfico, no-geométrico, no, nada; todo pero de otro tipo, otra visión, otra clase… Yo estaba verdaderamente trabajando para llegar a lo no-antropomórfico, no geométrico, no-no…” (Eva Hesse) Un tumor cerebral truncó la carrera de esta artista nacida en Alemania, pero que llegó a los Estados Unidos con tres años de edad, después de que su familia abandonara la Alemania nazi por su condición de judíos. Eva Hesse apenas si tuvo 10 años para desarrollar una obra que causó una profunda huella y que la colocaron en un nivel parejo al de Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, o Richard Serra. Su trayectoria artística se inició de la mano del dibujo y la pintura, hasta que en 1964 viaja, junto con su marido, el escultor Tom Doyle, a la ciudad alemana de Düsseldorf, donde empezará a trabajar en el mundo de la escultura y las instalaciones, camino en el que ahondará a su regreso al año siguiente, a los Estados Unidos y de su separación matrimonial. Las etiquetas que los expertos colocan a la obra de Hesse, van desde el postminimalismo, el conceptual e incluso la abstracción excéntrica, por el uso que hace de materiales como el látex, la fibra de vidrio y el plástico, cuerdas, materiales de deshecho, con los que elabora unas obras en las que busca materializar “mi idea de absurdidad y sentimiento extremo”, como afirmaba la propia artista. Una obra que durante años se analizó en clave vital, siguiendo los intrincados caminos de una existencia marcada por la huída de Alemania y la pérdida de gran parte de su familia en los campos de exterminio, o el suicidio de su propia madre. Análisis que artículos publicados después de su muerte, como es el caso de Barbara Rose que en un artículo dedicado a Hesse decía de ella que era una “hermosa y valiente mujer que produjo en pocos años una de las más imponentemente originales obras del reciente arte norteamericano” (A Special Woman, Her Surprise Art, Revista Vogue, 1973) El caso es que Eva Hesse ha dejado para la posteridad una obra que, como escribe José Miguel G. Cortés, se mueve “al borde de cualquier ilusión de integridad, perfección o sentido de permanencia”. Una obra en la que se combinan los materiales duros y blandos destacando las cualidades sensuales del material en unas obras de enorme sensibilidad, vigorosas en su aparente fragilidad, y que imponen sus formas al espectador. De ella se ha escrito que “hizo su propio camino con extraordinarias sensibilidad y libertad, pasando de las formas geométricas a las biomórficas, evocando sutilmente lo irracional y lo orgánico, lo industrial y lo erótico”. “Pongo mi mano a prueba en los contrastes más absurdos y extremos. Siempre me ha resultado más interesante que hacer algo normal con la altura y las medidas adecuadas” (Eva Hesse)
Every designer likes to think of themselves as original in some way, but I also like to consider my influences, who my predecessors are, and which of my contemporaries work in a similar vein. I like to do this with other trends and design themes, in order to get a better understanding of wh
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