Eva Hesse: Oberlin Drawings

This monumental tome contains the entirety of the important German artists drawings held in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. The AMAM was the first museum to purchase a sculpture by Hesse, Laocoon, in 1970. In gratitude for its recognition of Hesses work, and following the artists untimely death, her sister Helen Hesse Charash generously donated the artists notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, photographs and letters to the museum. Hesses 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. Hesses custom of introducing sculptural materials into drawing and painting continues to influence artmaking today.

Eva Hesse (1936-70) was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Her work combined the seriality and reductionism of 1960s minimalism with emotion, sensuousness and physicality. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim and many others.