Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse in her studio in 1965.
Born	(1936-01-11)January 11, 1936 Hamburg, Germany
Died	May 29, 1970(1970-05-29) (aged 34) New York City, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Yale University, studied with Josef Albers at Yale, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Art Students League of New York
Known for	Sculpture
Movement	Postminimalism
Spouse(s)	Tom Doyle (1962-1966; divorced)

Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970), was a Jewish German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 1960s.

Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany, on January 11, 1936. When Hesse was two years old in December 1938, her parents, hoping to flee from Nazi Germany, sent Hesse and her older sister, Helen Hesse Charash, to the Netherlands via Kindertransport. After almost six months of separation, the reunited family moved to England and then, in 1939, emigrated to New York City, where they settled into Manhattan's Washington Heights. In 1944, Hesse's parents separated; her father remarried in 1945 and her mother committed suicide in 1946. In 1962, she met and married sculptor Tom Doyle; they divorced in 1966. In October 1969, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and she died on Friday, May 29, 1970. Her death, after three operations within a year, at age 34 ended a career spanning only 10 years.

Hesse graduated from New York's School of Industrial Art at the age of 16, and in 1952 she enrolled in the Pratt Institute of Design. She dropped out only a year later. Then, from 1954-1957 she studied at Cooper Union and in 1959 she received her BA from Yale University. While at Yale, Hesse studied under Josef Albers and was heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism.

After Yale, Eva returned to New York, where she became friends with many other young minimalist artists, including Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Yayoi Kusama, and others. Her close friendship with Sol LeWitt remained until the end of her life. The two frequently wrote to one another, and in 1965 Sol famously counseled a young doubting Eva to "Stop [thinking] and just DO!" Sol and Eva went on to become two of the most influential artists of the 1960s, and their friendship aided in the artistic development of each of their works.