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Lot Essay
An iconic figure in Post-War art, Eva Hesse is best known for her trailblazing innovations in sculpture. Yet, these mature "Post-Minimalist" or "Process" based works executed from 1965 through her tragic and untimely death in 1970 were preceded by years of artistic struggle. The highly personal and idiosyncratic products of her early career bear witness to this quest and spill over into the constructions of her signature period. The strange, dark, fragile, "ugly beauty" that characterizes her sculptures stems from early works such as the series of photograms she created as a student at Yale University, where she trained as a painter under the tutelage of Joseph Albers.
Untitled of 1958 derives from a series of photograms that Hesse began in 1957. In their experimental quality, the works created a bridge between abstraction and figuration, heralding the artist's mature production.
Improvisational and eccentric, the photograms involve collaging often unrecognizable objects onto photo-sensitive paper. The resulting images have a spectral, haunting, and vulnerable quality; their organic, off-center, asymmetrical compositions also hark to similar qualities Hesse would use to soften the Minimalist aspects of her later sculptures.
Untitled of 1958 derives from a series of photograms that Hesse began in 1957. In their experimental quality, the works created a bridge between abstraction and figuration, heralding the artist's mature production.
Improvisational and eccentric, the photograms involve collaging often unrecognizable objects onto photo-sensitive paper. The resulting images have a spectral, haunting, and vulnerable quality; their organic, off-center, asymmetrical compositions also hark to similar qualities Hesse would use to soften the Minimalist aspects of her later sculptures.