This monumental tome contains the entirety of the important German artist’s drawings held in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. The AMAM was the first museum to purchase a sculpture, Laocoon, by Hesse, in 1970. In gratitude for its recognition of Hesse’s work, and following the artist’s untimely death, her sister Helen Hesse Charash generously donated the artist’s notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, photographs and letters to the museum.
Hesse’s drawings played a crucial role played in her work, which in turn gave way to an array of highly innovative techniques and styles that today still defy classification. As she commented in 1970: I had a great deal of difficulty with painting but never with drawing…. The translation or transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious… . So I started working in relief and with line using the cords and ropes that are now so commonly used. Hesse’s custom of introducing sculptural materials into drawing and painting continues to influence the multidisciplinary work prevalent in contemporary art.Eva Hesse (1936 70) was one of the foremost women artists of the twentieth century. Her artistic practice combined the seriality and reduction of 1960s Minimalism with emotion, sensuousness and physicality, while the transparency and transience of her unconventional materials also contributed greatly to her unique position in the art world of her day. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim and many others.