mercoledì 27 novembre 2013

EVA HESSE: ONE MORE THAN ONE - HAMBURGER KUNSTHALLE



EVA HESSE
ONE MORE THAN ONE
Curators: Brigitte Kölle and Petra Roettig
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Glockengiesserwall - Hamburg
28/11/2013 al 2/3/2014

Eva Hesse (Hamburg, 1936–New York, 1970) was one of the foremost women artists of the 20th century. In the mid-1960s she began experimenting with new materials that had never before been used to produce art objects; these included polyester, fiberglass and latex. Hesse's highly distinctive sculptures, which are now included in the collections of major international museums, combine multiple – and also opposing – qualities such as hard and soft, fragile and substantial, abstract and evocative. While their seriality and reduction show the influence of the emerging Minimal Art movement, her sculptures and drawings are uniquely charged with sensuous materiality and physicality.
One More than One is the first solo exhibition of the artist's work in her native city, which she was forced to leave in 1938. Her family were Jewish, and in 1939 they emigrated via the Netherlands and England to New York. In the 1950s Eva Hesse studied painting at the Cooper Union School and also at Yale School of Art and Architecture.
The exhibition focuses on sculptures and drawings from the latter part of her short career – the highly productive phase from 1966 until her early death in 1970. Featuring numerous loans from major international museums and private collections, it provides an extremely rare opportunity to view Eva Hesse's late works, some of which are being shown in Germany for the very first time.

Concurrently with EVA HESSE. One more than one, the exhibition GEGO. Line as Object is being presented on the 2nd floor of the Galerie der Gegenwart. For the first time, works by these two internationally renowned artists are being presented in dialogue in Hamburg, the city of their birth. Each in their own way, Eva Hesse and Gego, whose real name was Gertrud Goldschmidt (Hamburg, 1912–Caracas, 1994), were pioneers of spatial installation and also in the use of non-traditional materials in the context of art.

Image: Eva Hesse. Photo: Hermann Landshoff , © Estate of Eva Hesse. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Zürich London / Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv Landshoff