Beginning May 2, 2024, Hauser & Wirth will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Eva Hesse’s representation by the gallery by spotlighting her remarkable achievements in a new art exhibition, Eva Hesse Five Sculptures. This exhibition, organized by Barry Rosen, longtime adviser to the Hesse estate, in collaboration with art historian and critic Briony Fer, reunites five of her most celebrated large-scale works, all on loan from major American museums and all made in the most intense period at the end of her life from 1967 to 1969. Installed on the ground floor of Hauser & Wirth’s gallery on West 22nd Street, the exhibition will emphasize the breadth, scope and impact of Hesse’s materially experimental and psychologically charged sculptures.
Eva Hesse (1936-1970) transformed the language of sculpture through her pioneering use of alternative forms and materials. Challenging the hard-edged, manufactured aesthetic of the prevailing minimalist movement of her day, Hesse’s use of latex, Fiberglas and industrial plastics opened new possibilities in art. Half a century later, her groundbreaking oeuvre is as potent as it was in 1968, the year of the first and only exhibition of her sculptures held during her lifetime. That there have been some fifteen exhibitions in the decades following her death in 1970 is a testament to Hesse’s continued contemporaneity.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release Eva Hesse: Exhibitions, 1972–2022. Offering insight into Hesse’s milestone exhibitions from 1972 to the present day, this special volume addresses the ways in which exhibitions evolve from ideas to critical reception through the prism of Hesse’s work and her journey to becoming an icon of American art. Texts by the museum curators who made these shows reflect the personal dimension of crafting an exhibition, its intent and its reception. Edited by Barry Rosen and accompanied by extensive installation views, archival material, exhibition-related ephemera and snapshots, Eva Hesse: Exhibitions, 1972–2022 brings these exhibitions to life through the voices of Linda Shearer, Nicholas Serota, Ellen Johnson, Helen Cooper, Renate Petzinger, Elisabeth Sussman, Sabine Folie, Fred Wasserman, Catherine De Zegher, Fiona Bradley, Briony Fer, Luanne McKinnon, Petra Roettig, Brigitte Kölle, Andres Gyorody and Lena Stringari.
About the exhibition
‘The effect of a lot of Hesse’s large-scale sculpture is to put in question what you think you know about art.’ –– Briony Fer.
Unlike most of the abstract sculpture being produced at the time, Hesse’s works were abstract yet powerfully evocative of human corporality, laying bare the processes used to make them.
Will you be checking out Hauser & Wirth’s new exhibition, Eva Hesse Five Sculptures?
