“It is my main concern to go beyond what I know and what I can know.” During her brief lifetime, Eva Hesse (1936–1970) redefined the boundaries between drawing, painting, and sculpture. One of the few women artists working in the 1960s who was publicly acclaimed for her work during her lifetime, Hesse is best known for her sculpture. She created fiberglass and resin cylinders that sprang from the gallery floor, metal tubes that reached toward the viewer from the wall, and tangles of latex-covered rope that hung differently every time they were displayed. That work was informed by a lifelong drawing practice, a “wild space” that led Hesse to create radically experimental works in other mediums. She made intricate, freeform compositions nestled inside collages of stacked, boxlike forms, and filled sheets of graph paper with meticulous, diminutive handmade circles, each mark subtly different from the next. Hesse’s art was distinguished by a seriously playful process, a fearless approach to materials, and an embrace of a deliberate unpredictability.
Revealing an artist reimagining the possibilities of abstraction, Eva Hesse: Wild Space, 1957–1970 brings together an expansive selection of her drawings along with some of her most groundbreaking paintings and sculptures. Featuring many artworks not seen for decades in New York—where Hesse lived and worked during most of her life—this exhibition celebrates her open-ended search for artistic freedom through restless invention. “The drawings could be called paintings legitimately and a lot of my sculpture could be called painting,” she remarked. “And a lot of my work could be called nothing or an object or any new word you want to call it.”
Organized by Lanka Tattersall, Laurenz Foundation Curator, with Eva Caston, Curatorial Assistant, Margarita Lizcano Hernandez, former Curatorial Associate, and Henry Wahlenmayer, Louise Bourgeois Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints.