ANDOVER, MASS.- This September, the Addison Gallery of American Art will present three exhibitions that focus on artists’ friendships and collaborations. Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt anchors the season. Organized by the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, this project celebrates the rapport between two of the most significant American artists of the postwar era: Eva Hesse (1936–1970) and Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Further exploring this theme, the Addison will also present In Tandem: Inspirations and Collaborations, presenting works from the permanent collection created by artists who worked together or were inspired by each other, and Words in Air, an exhibition of the work of the Addison’s Edward E. Elson Artists-in-Residence Jennifer Caine and Rachel Hellmann. All three shows will run through early January.

Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt, on view September 12, 2015–January 10, 2016, presents approximately 50 works, including many that have not been publicly exhibited for decades. While the two artists’ practices diverged in innumerable, seemingly antithetical ways—LeWitt’s work is associated with ideas and system-based conceptual art and Hesse’s is associated with the body and her own hand—this exhibition will illuminate the crucial impact of their friendship on both their art and lives. A scholarly catalogue, published in association with Yale University Press, accompanies the show and includes essays by curator Veronica Roberts, art critic and friend of the artists Lucy Lippard, and others.

In spite of the dramatic differences between their artistic processes, Hesse and LeWitt nevertheless developed a close bond, evident in the extensive correspondence that ensued over the course of their more than decade-long friendship. In 1965, while Hesse was in Germany for a 15-month residency, LeWitt sent her an extraordinary five-page letter in which he famously urged, “Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out…Stop it and just DO!” In addition to this letter which will be on display in the exhibition, the accompanying catalogue also reproduces dozens of postcards from LeWitt’s voluminous correspondence with Hesse, illuminating the affectionate, and often humorous, nature of their friendship.

In 1970, immediately upon learning of Hesse’s premature death from a brain tumor at the age of 34, LeWitt created Wall Drawing #46 for an exhibition of his work in Paris. The work consists of a wall covered with “not straight” pencil lines that LeWitt drew as a way of paying homage to the organic contours that were a hallmark of Hesse’s art. This landmark work will be one of five wall drawings in the exhibition. More than an isolated gesture of affection, Wall Drawing #46 demonstrates how Hesse’s artistic influence shaped LeWitt’s practice in indelible ways.

Numerous works in the exhibition also illustrate the reverse: LeWitt’s impact on Hesse’s work. Accession V, a galvanized steel and rubber sculpture, responds to LeWitt in its use of the cube (a quintessential LeWittian and Minimalist form); the sculpture also marks one of Hesse’s first attempts at working with outside fabricators, a practice commonly used by LeWitt at the time. The artists’ aesthetic dialogue is also evident in a striking 1969 Hesse drawing of stacked horizontal lines made with gouache, silver paint, and pencil. With its silvery palette and grid-like composition, this untitled work, which has not been publicly exhibited for 30 years, hints at LeWitt’s influence on Hesse’s evolution as an artist.

In Tandem: Inspirations and Collaborations, , which runs September 1, 2015–January 3, 2016, examines works from the Addison’s collection in the contextual framework of artistic inspiration, influence, and dialogue. Exchanging ideas with mentors and peers—fellow students, friends, studio mates, travel companions, or collaborators—has always been a significant source of inspiration for artists. For some, who met in their youth, their encounter was formative: Abbott Handerson Thayer and George de Forest Brush established a life-long friendship while studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, for example. For others, who crossed paths later in life, it was transformative, as was the case with Maud Morgan, who began collaborating with Michael Silver when she was 91. In the 20th century, as art academies and formal movements gradually lost momentum, forming associations with fellow artists became even more important in the development of their practice. Specifically, collaborative artists’ projects have emerged as a significant thread of contemporary art; portfolios such Photographs and Etchings by Lee Friedlander and Jim Dine embody the interpretive possibilities of pairing the sensibilities of two artists working in different media, yet exploring similar visual motifs.

Words in Air: Jennifer Caine and Rachel Hellmann in Collaboration debuts a site-specific installation by Jennifer Caine and Rachel Hellman, the Addison’s current Edward E. Elson Artists-in-Residence, and will be on view September 12, 2015–January 17, 2016. Inspired by the language of painting and poetry and the powerful ways in which each art form communicates distillations of experience, Caine and Hellmann have constructed a piece that combines the visual and verbal and embodies ideas of collaboration and creative exchange. Comprised of floor-to-ceiling painted, sewn, and hand-cut paper “pages,” Words in Air resembles a human-scale artist’s book—a porous container of light and color that invites movement in, around, and through it.

Transcribing a selection of verses by 20th century American female poets in an invented shorthand of simplified marks, the artists blend a chorus of voices into a single visual response. Addressing ideas of light and color in both their choice of poems and in their process the artists marry form and content. Woven together, layered, and suspended in space, the “words” are united through cast shadows and reflected color to create a visual experience that is cohesive and solid, but at the same time shimmers and shifts in conversation with the ever-changing light and movement of visitors within the space.