NEW YORK, NY.- Hauser & Wirth Institute announced a new digital catalogue raisonné, Eva Hesse Drawings, developed under the direction of scholars Dr. Renate Petzinger and Barry Rosen of the Eva Hesse Estate, who previously collaborated on the two-volume catalogue raisonné of Eva Hesse’s paintings and sculpture. Originally planned as a print publication, Hauser & Wirth Institute provided the support to produce this first-ever compilation of Hesse’s entire body of works on paper as a free, online resource.
Drawing is the continuous thread as Hesse turned from the painter she began as to the sculptor she became…there is certainly a ferocious sense of herself – and her hand – on a sheet of paper, however diverse her practice would become. — Briony Fer, 2019
Known for her pioneering work in sculpture and innovative use of latex, fiberglass, and plastics, Hesse’s works on paper reveal an understudied aspect of her practice. The catalogue raisonné charts the origins of her enduring engagement with the medium as a primary site for her experimentations with new ideas and processes, and illuminates the vital role that drawing played throughout her career. “What is important about this catalogue raisonné is that it reveals Eva Hesse in her totality: a constantly-evolving artist, persistent and enduring in her vision”, explained co-editor Barry Rosen.
Eva Hesse Drawings encompasses approximately 1,120 works on paper created by Eva Hesse between 1952 and her death in 1970 at 34 years old. The publication includes drawings, collages, photograms, etchings, lithographs, pages from diaries and notebooks, and sketches for sculptures—with around 350 works from her teenage years.
“We are thrilled to provide this free resource as part of our mission to radically increase access to the art-historical record,” said Lisa Darms, Executive Director of Hauser & Wirth Institute. “This online catalogue raisonné provides entry into the lesser-known aspects of Hesse’s practice and showcases the stunning breadth of the artist’s experimentation during her short lifetime.”
t is a curious characteristic of many of Hesse’s works that once you have been touched by them you are caught between emotions. That they can be simultaneously experienced as humorous, impressive, whimsical, pathetic, calm, frantic, grand, or sad is a measure in some contradictory manner of the seriousness that lies at the core of her art. — Lucy Lippard, 1976
Eva Hesse was born in 1936 in Hamburg, Germany. Her family fled Nazi Germany, eventually emigrating to New York City in 1939. Hesse graduated from Yale in 1959, after studying under abstract painter Josef Albers. She returned to New York, involving herself in a circle of other minimalist artists, such as Sol Le Witt, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson. They worked with materials that were new for the time—latex, fiberglass, plastic, polythene—elements which yielded works alive with mutability, instability.
Along with this group of artists, Eva Hesse ushered in the postminimal movement and emerged as an icon of American art in the 1960s. Her death in 1970, at the age of 34, cut short a career that became a major influence on subsequent generations of artists, despite spanning only a decade. Recent comprehensive solo exhibitions, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as well as a retrospective that toured from the San Francisco MoMA to Museum Wiesbaden and the Tate Modern in London, highlight the lasting interest in her oeuvre.
The success of Hesse’s work indicates its innovating relevance to the art and culture of the twenty-first century in so many ways as well as its radicality in anticipating the contemporary collapse of disciplinary boundaries and the hybridization of media. — Catherine de Zegher, 2006
