POST-MINIMALIST SCULPTURE OF EVE HESSE ON THE 1960S AMERICAN SCENE: BETWEEN FEMINIST, AESTHETIC FORMALIST AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOURSES
Keywords:
Eva Hesse, repetitive patterns, northodox materials, Holocaust, Minimalism, AntiformAbstract
During the 1960s in New York, young artists could not remain distanced from the current social changes caused by the Vietnam and Cold Wars, as well as with the advent of the civil, racial and gender rights movements. Among them was Eva Hesse (1936–1970), a Jewish artist from Hamburg, whose opus can be approached from the feminist discourse and understood as part of a wider struggle to improve the position of women artists in New York, or it can be analysed as a response to the Holocaust trauma and psychological pressures induced by the divorce of her parents, her motherʼs suicide and her brain tumour. Between 1965 and 1970, Eva Hesse created more than seventy sculptures using a repetitive process that unexpectedly emphasized the organic and intimate character of her art. Working with unorthodox materials, such as latex, wax, ropes, gauze and fibreglass, she highlighted the fragility and sensibility of her sculptures, confronting the „logic” of cold and distant Minimalism. In this paper, we will provide a critical reception of Eve Hesseʼs oeuvre by examining her selected sculptures and its connections with the then predominant Pop art, Minimalism and Antiform art. At the same time, we will pay attention to Hesseʼs thoughts on Feminism of the 1960s. The existentialist sculpture of Eva Hesse expresses her thoughts, experiences and emotions, and her original use of unusual industrial materials unexpectedly reveals the repressive mechanisms of contemporary society.
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References
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