The exhibition focuses on Hesse’s large-scale latex and fiberglass sculptures, subtle and luminous works that are singular achievements. Also on view are significant earlier sculptures and drawings which show the creative evolution of the artist.
Eva Hesse was born in Hamburg in 1936 to a prominent Orthodox Jewish family. In December 1938, she and her older sister were sent to Holland on a kindertransport (children’s train) to escape Nazi persecution. Her parents followed a few months later, and the family came to reside in New York City, where Hesse was raised in the German Jewish refugee community of Washington Heights.
Hesse attended the Art Students League, Pratt Institute, and Cooper Union. She subsequently studied with Josef Albers at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture, receiving her B.F.A. degree in 1959. At that point, she began to pursue her decade-long artistic career. She had her first one-person show, Eva Hesse: Recent Drawings, at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1963. The next year, Hesse and her husband, the sculptor Tom Doyle, were invited to work in Germany, where the couple stayed for 15 months. She completed her first reliefs there and had a 1965 solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf that included 14 reliefs and some 50 drawings.
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