Eva Hesse

Key facts

Lived

1936–1970, German-American

Movements

• Post-Minimalism
• Contemporary

Works held in

9 museums

Plan your visit to see Eva Hesse →

• What is Eva Hesse's most famous work?+

  Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a German-born American Post-Minimalist sculptor. Her family fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and she later studied at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and Yale University. Hesse's career was brief; she died of a brain tumour at age 34. Hesse worked with unusual materials, such as latex, fibre-glass, rubberised cheesecloth, rope, string, wire, and synthetic resins. She explored contradictions, such as order versus chaos, and stringy versus mass. One of her well-known pieces is Untitled (1968), which uses fibre-glass and latex. Its geometric form implies boxes, but the uneven surfaces transform the fibre-glass into an organic substance. Another major work, Expanded Expansion (1969), consists of modular elements made from cheesecloth, rubber, and fibre-glass poles. It was displayed in a memorial exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1972.
• What should I know about Eva Hesse's prints?+

  Eva Hesse (born Hamburg, 1936; died New York City, 1970) was part of the post-Minimalist or Process Art movement. This tendency moved away from both Abstract Expressionism and the rigid geometry of Minimalism. Instead, artists explored the human body, chance occurrences, and improvisation. They also experimented with non-traditional materials like industrial felt, molten lead, wax, and rubber. Hesse's abstract sculptures contributed to this shift. Though best known for her sculpture, Hesse also made drawings and prints. In 1961, she participated in a watercolour exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum, as well as a drawing show called 'Drawings: Three Young Americans' at the John Heller Gallery in New York. Her first solo show of drawings occurred at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1963. Hesse taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1968 to 1970 and participated in several exhibitions of Minimal and Post-Minimal sculpture.
• What style or movement did Eva Hesse belong to?+

  Eva Hesse's artistic trajectory moved through several styles. Initially, she painted in an Abstract Expressionist style, employing thick impasto paint to create fluid shapes intended to convey emotion. Around 1966, Hesse shifted her focus from painting to sculpture. She began experimenting with industrial and found materials in the disused factory she and her husband used as a studio. Her work with these materials aimed to push the boundaries of possibility. She sought to achieve a kind of "non-art" through contrasts and oppositions. Hesse is often classified as a Post-Minimalist. This term describes a range of styles connected to Minimalism, but with different concerns. Post-Minimalism questions the geometric rigidity of Minimalism. It finds inspiration in the human body, random occurrences, improvisation, and non-traditional materials such as industrial felt, molten lead, wax, and rubber. Hesse contributed to this with her abstract sculptural works. She rejected volume, mass, and verticality, favouring eccentric forms.
• What techniques or materials did Eva Hesse use?+

  Eva Hesse, born in Hamburg in 1936, began her artistic career painting in an Abstract Expressionist style. She studied at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and Yale University's School of Art and Architecture. In 1966, Hesse shifted from painting to sculpture. She experimented with industrial and found materials, such as rope, string, wire, and paper, often sourced from a disused factory that she and her husband used as a studio. She aimed to create what she termed "non-art", pushing the boundaries of possibility and logic. Hesse explored contrasts and contradictions in her work. She incorporated oppositions such as order versus chaos, stringy versus mass, and huge versus small. Hesse also used latex and fibreglass in her sculptures, beginning in 1967 and 1968 respectively. An example is *Expanded Expansion* (1969), constructed from cheesecloth, rubber, fibreglass poles, and resin. Hesse often repeated processes to an almost obsessive degree, and she is now classified as a Post-Minimalist artist. She died in New York in 1970.
• What was Eva Hesse known for?+

  Eva Hesse, born in Hamburg in 1936, is known for her contributions to Post-Minimalism. Her family fled Nazi persecution and she was raised in New York. Hesse initially painted in an Abstract Expressionist style, using thick impasto paint to convey emotion. Around 1966, Hesse shifted her focus to sculpture, using industrial and found materials. She experimented with these materials in the disused factory that she and her husband used as a studio. She aimed to create a kind of ‘non-art’, pushing the boundaries of possibility. Her working method involved inventing a new process, then repeating it almost obsessively. Hesse's abstract sculptures often had a basis in geometry, but also suggested organic forms. She worked with unusual materials such as acrylic paint on papier-mâché, and later fibreglass, which became a trademark. Her sculptures reveal the processes by which they took shape, such as dripping, pooling, and drying. A classic work is *Untitled*, which uses geometric forms, but transforms the fibreglass into an organic substance. Hesse's sculptures are full of contradictions; they can be funny and morbid, geometric and organic, abstract and referential. Hesse died in 1970, at the age of 34.
• When did Eva Hesse live and work?+

  Eva Hesse was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936. Her family fled Nazi persecution in 1939, settling in New York City, and she became a US citizen in 1945. Hesse's formal art training included studies at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and Yale University's School of Art and Architecture, from which she received her BFA in 1959. During the mid-1960s, Hesse emerged as an artist, a period when the women's movement gained momentum. She married in 1961 and lived in Germany from 1964 to 1965. Hesse's work incorporated both industrial and everyday materials, such as rope, string, wire, and latex. She created abstract, sensual sculptural works, often playing with contradictions like order versus chaos. Hesse taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1968 to 1970. Her career was cut short when she died of a brain tumour in New York in 1970, at the age of 34. A memorial exhibition of her sculpture was held at the Guggenheim Museum in 1972.
• Where can I see Eva Hesse's work?+

  Eva Hesse's work can be viewed in person at several museums. These include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Also in the United States, her pieces are held at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Harvard University, Cambridge), and the Museum of Art (Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh). In Europe, Hesse's art can be found at the Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark, the Sonja Henies og Niels Onstads Stiftelser in Norway, and the Kunstmuseums in Bern and Luzern. Her work is also held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris. Hesse's 'Expanded Expansion' (1969) is in the collection of the Guggenheim. This piece is made of fibreglass and rubberised cheesecloth, in three units.
• Where was Eva Hesse from?+

  Eva Hesse was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 11 January 1936. In 1939, her family fled Nazi persecution and moved to New York City. She became a United States citizen in 1945. Hesse's early life was marked by trauma; she and her sister were sent to Holland by train when Eva was only two years old. The family reunited briefly in England before settling in New York. Her father, a lawyer in Hamburg, struggled to find work in the United States, and Hesse’s mother committed suicide when Eva was ten. Hesse studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and Yale University's School of Art and Architecture, where she studied painting with Josef Albers. After graduating from Yale in 1959, she returned to New York, where she met artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Sol LeWitt. Hesse's first solo show of drawings took place at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York in 1963. She died in New York in 1970.
• Who did Eva Hesse influence?+

  Eva Hesse's work influenced a subsequent generation of women artists. One such artist, Mona Hatoum, stated that Hesse was a model figure for her generation. Hatoum felt that Hesse's art, with its organic forms and connection to the body, offered an alternative to Minimalism. Hatoum's 1995 work, *Van Gogh's Back*, also shows Hesse's influence. Hesse came to maturity as an artist in the mid-1960s, a time of change in the art world. Artists began to question the geometric rigidity of Minimalism. They found inspiration in the human body, chance occurrences, improvisation, and non-traditional materials such as industrial felt, molten lead, wax, and rubber. Hesse contributed to this radical undermining of artistic convention with her abstract, sensual sculptural works. She rejected the standard attributes of monumental sculpture: volume, mass, and verticality. Instead, she favoured eccentric forms. Hesse's brief career lasted only a decade, ending with her death at age 34.
• Who influenced Eva Hesse?+

  Eva Hesse found inspiration and friendly competition within the New York art community. She felt close to David Smith and Hans Hofmann, and they "nourished each other as colleagues". Hofmann felt a "friendly competition" with her work. Hesse stated that such relationships are valuable, as "art is such a lonely business anyway". Hesse's influences included Analytic Cubism, particularly the work of Braque and Picasso. She also studied early Kandinsky and Miró, alongside Matisse and Mondrian. She analysed the structure of their paintings, citing Matisse's *Blue Window* (1913), Miró's *Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird* (1926), Cézanne's *Card Players* (1890-92), and Mondrian's grid paintings as important examples. She also looked at Léger, Renaissance and Quattrocento artists, Old Masters, American masters, and African art. Later, she appreciated Matisse, but was more affected by Analytic Cubist drawing. By 1950-51, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and the entire New York School had become her mentors. She saw Gorky's *Agony* (1947) and *The Liver Is the Cock's Comb* (1944) in his 1951 show at the Whitney. She also saw many of Pollock's 1940s works.
• Who was Eva Hesse?+

  Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a German-born American artist known for her contributions to Post-Minimalism and Process Art. Born in Hamburg, her Jewish family fled Nazi Germany in 1939, settling in New York City. She became a US citizen in 1945. Hesse's early artistic training included studies at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and Yale University's School of Art and Architecture, where she studied painting with Albers and earned her BFA in 1959. Initially painting in an Abstract Expressionist style, Hesse later shifted to sculpture, incorporating industrial and everyday materials such as rope, string, wire, latex, and fibreglass. Her work often explored contradictions, order versus chaos, and the absurd. Hesse's first solo show of drawings occurred at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1963. In 1964, she lived in Kettwig-am-Ruhr, Germany. Her first solo sculpture exhibition was held in Düsseldorf in 1965. She taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1968 to 1970. Hesse's career was cut short by a brain tumour; she died in 1970 at the age of 34.
• Why are Eva Hesse's works important today?+

  Eva Hesse (1936-1970) is important for her contribution to Post-Minimalism and Process Art. Her brief but significant career saw her challenge artistic conventions through abstract, sensual sculptures. Born in Hamburg, Hesse fled Nazi persecution with her family, arriving in New York in 1939. She studied at the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, and Yale, initially painting in an Abstract Expressionist style. By the mid-1960s, she began creating sculpture, using industrial materials like latex and fibreglass. Hesse's work often incorporated organic forms, contrasting with the machine-made aesthetic of Minimalism. She embraced imperfection and the creative process itself, insisting that the act of creation was as important as the finished piece. Her sculptures explored contradictions: order versus chaos, stringy versus mass, huge versus small. A work such as Sequel (1967) uses latex spheres to mediate between the artwork and the space it occupies. Hesse’s sculptures evoke frailty, wear, and decay. She questioned standard attributes of sculpture, such as volume and verticality, favouring eccentric forms.