Eva Hesse...

Eva Hesse in her home and studio at 134 Bowery, New York, 1965.

Untitled, 1962.

Eva Hesse - Eva was a German born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass and plastics.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. Danto describes her as "coping with emotional chaos by reinventing sculpture through aesthetic insubordination, playing with worthless material amid the industrial ruins of a defeated nation that, only two decades earlier, would have murdered her without a second thought." She also always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world. She continually experimented with new processes and materials, which included the use of string, resin and latex, in order to push the boundaries of art, moving beyond definitions of figuration or abstraction. Combining both rigidity and pliability, the machine-made and the hand-crafted, hard geometric abstraction and soft organic curves, her work refuses to be categorised. As Hesse herself commented: ‘The drawings could be called paintings legitimately, and a lot of my sculpture could be called paintings, and a lot of it could be called nothing - a thing or any object or any new word that you want to give it.’ Hesse is one of a few artists who led the move from Minimalism to Postminimalism. Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its "mirth and jokiness" and "unmistakable whiff of eroticism", its "nonmechanical repetition". She was influenced by, and in turn influenced, many famous artists of the 1960s through today. Eva Hesse was for many artists and friends who knew her so charismatic that her memory remains simply unforgettable to this day.

www.tate.org.uk

Eva Hesse, Ennead, 1966.

Eva Hesse with two pieces of work from 1965.

Eva Hesse, untitled, 1969.