Eva Hesse: One More than One

by Hubertus Gassner (Editor), Eva Hesse (Artist), Renate Petzinger (Contributor)

Eva Hesse (1936–1970) was one of the foremost women artists of the twentieth century. Her artistic practice combined the seriality and reduction of 1960s Minimalism with emotion, sensuousness and physicality, while the transparency and transience of her unconventional materials also contributed greatly to her unique position in the art world of her day. From November 2013 onward, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first solo exhibition of Hesse’s work in her native city. Hesse emigrated with her family via the Netherlands and England to the United States in 1938. They settled in New York City, where she later studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art from 1954 to 1957, and then continued her studies in the master class of Josef Albers at the Yale School of Art and Architecture from 1957 to 1959. At the invitation of Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt, a German industrialist and art collector, and his wife Isabel, Hesse and her husband Tom Doyle spent a year in Kettwig an der Ruhr during 1964–1965. This period is regarded as a turning point in Hesse’s artistic practice. Drawing inspiration from the materials she found in an abandoned textile factory in Kettwig, she made her first three-dimensional artworks, and when she returned to New York she devoted herself exclusively to sculpture, creating fragile works in unconventional materials such as polyester, fiberglass and latex. Hesse died of a brain tumor in 1970, aged just 34. The exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle focuses on the latter part of the artist’s career, a highly productive period in which she created a substantial number of sculptures and drawings.

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2014

Reviews

[Randy Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has the layout and heft of a book rather than a catalog, and is highly readable. Tilted towards interviews with her friends and peers, but tends towards the analytical and factual rather than biographical. However there is certainly enough of a sweet, wistful reminiscence running thru all of themto further distinguish it from a typical collection of art-historical essays. A long, unedited transcript of a conversation between Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Lucy Lippard (all very, very close friends of Hesse), which was conducted very shortly after her death (and 6 weeks before Smithson's), has the feel of a sprawling but inciteful, intimate, and immediate quality that was a high point for me (though it had been pubished before in Artforum in the late 2000s apparently).

The catalog images are in color and well-printed, though not comprehensive - this was documenting a fairly recent retrospective staged by the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Definitely worth picking up if you are already familiar with her work and her story.

[Julia Hannafin · Rating 5 out of 5]

i liked reading about eva and her work through the eyes of the people that surrounded her!