{"data":{"id":"601","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":601,"topgoose_id":3126,"tms_id":601,"display_name":"Eva Hesse","sort_name":"Hesse Eva","display_date":"1936–1970","begin_date":"1936","end_date":"1970","biography":"\u003cp\u003eBetween 1965 and 1970, Eva Hesse\nworked with diverse and sometimes unusual\nmaterials—from oil paint and graphite to\nlatex and fiberglass—to create a body of\nabstract paintings, drawings, and sculptures\nthat aimed, as she described it, to “go\nbeyond what I know and what I can know.”\nIn 1966, she executed drawings featuring\ngrayscale circles placed within gridded\nboxes or rectangular borders. For her 1966\nuntitled drawing, Hesse used a compass to\ndraft concentric rings and then filled the\nsections with ink wash to create the subtle\ngradation and cadences in the composition.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe amorphous compositions\nand tactile surfaces of her sculptural works\nallude to organic sources and reveal\nthe artist’s working processes. To create\n\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/1977\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSans II\u003c/em\u003e,\u003c/a\u003e Hesse collaborated with a plastics\nmanufacturer to cast sixty box-shaped\nunits in resin and fiberglass. She combined\nthese elements into five groups of twelve\nboxes (the Whitney owns two of these)\nand positioned them in a row. Despite the\nrigidity of the untraditional materials,\nthe boxes appear malleable and retain the\nincongruities of their making.\nIn the untitled 1969–70 scultpure,\none of the last works she made before her\ndeath from cancer at the age of thirty-four,\nmutability itself operates as a key medium.\nTo create this suspended work, Hesse\nhad knotted ropes dipped into buckets\nof latex. When hung up to dry—an act that\nbecomes part of the work’s process of\nconstruction and informs its presentation—\nthe viscous liquid either adhered to the\ntwisted ropes’ surfaces or dripped off, resulting\nin sections of tangled gnarls and sweeping\nloops. Hesse signaled her interest in such\nunpredictability in notes she made on a\npreparatory drawing: “hung irregularly tying\nknots as connections really letting it go\nas it will. Allowing it to determine more of\nthe way it completes its self.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500026528","wikidata_id":"Q215457","created_at":"2017-08-31T10:22:33.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-31T07:04:09.602-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/601/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/601/exhibitions"}}}}