“Llife ends. The art ends. Nothing matters, “he said. Eva Hessewho perhaps foresaw that his existence would not last long (he died at age 34 of brain cancer) did not foretell that his art would last forever.
Eva Hesse, pioneer of post-minimalism art
Despite, in fact, its very short life, Hesse has left a mark in contemporary art: today his works are considered the basis of the birth of post minimalism in the sixties. Now the Guggenheim Museum in New York celebrates his figure with a documentary dedicated to his art. A series of testimonies that show how much his work is still relevant today.
The Guggenheim Museum in New York celebrates the figure of Eva Hesse with a documentary dedicated to her art (Screenshot documentary)
A life of pain but full of art
Hesse was born in Germany, in Düsseldorf, in 1936, of Jewish parents: she was a child when her family suffered the Nazi persecutions. Later, she faced the separation of her parents and the suicide of her mother when she was only ten years old.
In all this pain, Hesse found a life partner in art. He signed up for the School of Industrial Art of New York and later graduated from Yale, where he met and studied with other young minimalist artists, including Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Yayoi Kusamabeginning to work on his first paintings, influenced byAbstract expressionism.
The return to Germany and the beginning of his art
In 1962 Eva married the sculptor Tom Doyle and the couple returned to Germany to live in an abandoned textile factory. And it was precisely here that the artist learned about the production machines and a manage new materials such as latex, fiberglass and plastic.
The marriage ended and Hesse, returned to America strong in this new language of hers, she became one of the pioneers of post-minimalism of the 1960s.
Eva Hesse: a feminine, not a feminist art
Many also described it as pioneer of a feminist art, given that the art world of the time, especially the minimalist current, was composed almost exclusively of men. But Hesse preferred to define her work as feminine, not feminist.
In his own words, the closest synthesis Hesse could find to describe his work was “chaos structured as non-chaos», As in the sculptures that contained randomness and confusion within them, presented within structured scaffolding.
The brain tumor was diagnosed in 1969. Thowever, he continued, in the last year of his life, to work on his sculptures. Her idea was to leave the world with the idea that she was not a female artist. But she is only an artist.
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