Eva Hesse Drawing

Approximately 100 of the artist’s drawings, including a critical selection of sketchbooks and notebooks

A significant figure in the development of postwar art, Eva Hesse (1936–1970), in her brief ten-year career, created paintings, sculpture, and works on paper that are striking in their poetic beauty and absurdity. Filtering the influences of Surrealism, Conceptualism, and Minimalism through her own distinctive sensibility, she continually experimented with new processes and materials, including the use of string, resin, and latex, pushing the boundaries of art beyond the dualistic definitions of figuration and abstraction or identification by medium. As she commented in the 1970s, “… I had a great deal of difficulty with painting but never with drawing. The drawings were never very simplistic. They ranged from linear to complicated washes and collages. The translation or transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious. It was not natural and I thought to translate it in some other way. So I started working in relief and with line—using the cords and ropes that are now so commonly used. I literally translated the line. I would vary the cord lengths and widths, and I would start with three-dimensional boards and I would build them out with papier-mâché or kinds of soft materials. I varied the materials a lot, but the structure would always be built with cords.”

While Hesse is known primarily for her sculpture, drawings lie at the core of her artistic practice. “Eva Hesse Drawing,” comprising over one hundred works, will present for the first time some of Hesse’s finest finished drawings—including representative works from each period of her mature phase—as well as examples of her very early drawings. Joining her “reliefs” of 1965 will be her “test pieces” (interpreted as a kind of sketch in three dimensions), her important notebooks and diaries, which she began keeping in the mid-1960s and which she kept for the rest of her life, and fifty-six of her working notes.

Curated by Catherine de Zegher and Elisabeth Sussman. Organized by The Drawing Center, New York City and The Menil Collection, Houston.

Pressetext

Eva Hesse Drawing
Co-Kuratoren: Catherine de Zegher, Elisabeth Sussman

Stationen:
03.02.06 - 23.04.06 Menil Collection, Houston
06.05.06 - 15.07.06 The Drawing Center, New York
06.08.06 - 23.10.06 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles