Publications

The book was published to mark the touring exhibition Forms Larger and Bolder: EVA HESSE DRAWINGS, which also sojourned at mumok from November 2019 to February 2020. In the catalogue some 350 drawings and works on paper by the artist, which are today preserved in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, have been reproduced for the very first time.

In her essay for the publication, the art historian Briony Fer writes: “Rather than saying that drawing expresses Hesse’s deepest feelings, maybe we could say that it was a way of articulating her frustration—that is, the shortfall between the wanting and the having, the thwarting and the satisfaction, that is vital to a creative life. In this sense the need to draw is—not so simply—the drive to carry on making work. Doing things on paper was not a substitute for doing supposedly more important things like make a painting or a sculpture—but what Hesse did because she was an artist (and not just a doodler).”

We are delighted that The New York Times has chosen the publication Eva Hesse: Oberlin Drawings as one of the “Best Art Books of 2020”!