Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse , 1936-70, American sculptor, b. Hamburg, Germany. Hesse's sculpture displays an antiformalism that developed in the late 1960s in reaction against conventional geometric constructivism. Using such materials as latex, fiberglass, wire, and rope, she built numerous repeating series of large and eccentric forms. These were grouped irregularly over the floor or hung from the ceiling. Hesse's innovative work was cut short by her death from a brain tumor.

Bibliography: See B. Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture (1989).

Hesse, Eva (1936–1970). German-born American sculptor. Her family fled the Nazis, settling in New York in 1939, and she became a US citizen in 1945. She studied at various art schools in New York, then at Yale University under Josef Albers, graduating in 1959. She did not take up sculpture until 1964, so her career lasted only six years, before her early death from a brain tumour. However, in that time she gained a high reputation as an exponent of ‘Eccentric Abstraction’ (the title of an exhibition in which her work was included, organized by her friend Lucy Lippard, at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, in 1966). Hesse is sometimes described as a Minimalist, but her work was too restlessly experimental to fit neatly into any category. It often shared with Minimal art the use of repeated units and severely limited colour, but she made inventive use of materials (including fibreglass, wood, wire, various fabrics, and rubber tubing), and her work is far from the emotional reserve typical of Minimalism; her forms are often organic and sexually suggestive. She was described in her obituary in the Guardian as ‘certainly one of the most outstanding sculptors to emerge during the sixties'.