ARCHIVE: Correspondence, Photographs, and Printed Matter.
Eva Hesse
correspondence, photographs, and printed matter
Eight handwritten letters from artist Eva Hesse to close friends Ethelyn Honig and Grace and Jerry Wapner, from the summer of 1964 to August 1965; including her famous commentary on the struggle
of woman artists and reflections on her shift from two- to three-dimensional work.
All date from the pivotal period Hesse and then-husband Tom Doyle spent in Kettwig, Germany, at
the invitation of industrialist and collector Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt. They provide new insight into
a significant and transformative phase in her life, both personally and artistically. The fifteen-month sabbatical – which was punctuated by intermittent travels to Italy, France, and Switzerland – was the principal catalyst for Hesse’s transition to sculpture, as it was in Kettwig that she began to experiment with the various industrial materials that would characterize her work from that point forward. It also accelerated the disintegration of her already fragile relationship with Doyle, most notably as she gained increased confidence and success with her new aesthetic direction. The warm, intimate letters are filled with fascinating, and often poignant, details about her state of mind, health, marriage, home issues, travels, and diverse circle of friends and acquaintances.
Also present are three vintage photographs of Hesse and her studio, as well as three original exhibition announcements.
Hesse is best-known for her innovative and sensuously organic tactile sculptures, created with previously underutilized materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastic. While her career was brief (she succumbed
to a brain tumor in 1970 at the age of 34), her impact on modern art has been profound. Critic Robert Hughes noted, “The artist who did the most to humanize Minimalism without sentimentalizing it was
Eva Hesse. …[S]he left a truncated body of work but one of remarkable power: an instrument of feeling that spoke of an inner life, sometimes fraught with anxiety...” (American Visions, p. 578).
The archive breaks down as follows:
I. Letters and Postcards
1. Autograph letter signed, “Eva,” to Ethelyn Honig; n.d. [Summer 1964]; 4to.; two pages, recto only;
white onion-skin paper; light vertical and horizontal creases, one each; very minor edge wear to both leaves, with horizontal tear near middle second page, from right edge to center of sheet.
This early composition can be effectively dated to some point not long after Hesse and Doyle’s June
1964 arrival in Kettwig, as Hesse states her hope that the couple’s recently-completed absentee ballot applications will allow them to “cancel out 2 stupid Goldwater votes.” Hesse informs Honig about
Tom Doyle’s upcoming October exhibition in Berne, Switzerland, the extension of their time in
Kettwig to at least the following March, and her recent weight gain. Hesse also relates her impressions
of a recent trip to Italy, in particular the city of Florence: “I loved Firenze best…. The entire scale of
the city intrigues me also in that it is compact and more fitting to mans scale. One feels more accepted
and acceptable to oneself.”
She follows with some thoughts on the potential impact the sojourn might have on her personal and aesthetic sensibilities: “I don’t know if anything shall change after my ‘broadened horizons.’ It’s
difficult to see in just what way this affects one. It certainly sets ones standards higher & higher and
you feel challenged to achieve a quality you have never reached before.”
In addition, glimpses of burgeoning interpersonal problems with Doyle are present:
Tom put me through a “party scene” the likes of which I will never go through again. Like one too many and I let him know it. Sunday after no sleep we boarded the train from Basel arrived Kettwig 8:30 evening and I walked into a pig sty. He even left jam & peanut butter open on table with the remains of icky stickies on same. Clothes strewn everywhere, window wide open and a completely mildewed or better moldy ice-box with a [sic] odor words cannot smell. This really set me straight for a hysteria fit indescribable. This after I even wrote a most clearly defined list of what to do before leaving. Now 28 hours later one can almost laugh.
Near the end, Hesse notes she was “eager to begin work and shall as soon as possible, after I send letters to schools, etc, re. Tom’s job and rest of business and cleaning up.”
2. Autograph letter signed, “Eva & Tom,” to Grace and Jerry Wapner; July 28, 1964; 4to.; one page, both sides; blue onion-skin paper, with matching autograph Air Mail envelope; light vertical and horizontal
creases, one each; very minor edge wear.
Written contemporaneously to the letter to Ethelyn Honig above, Hesse covers much of the same information, but goes into additional detail, such as her travels to Mallorca (with Ethelyn) and Paris
(with Tom Doyle), the German tendency to overdub foreign movies (“…imagine Tony Curtis and
Sidney Poitier in German”), and the weather (“Germany is cold & rainy — evidently that’s what it
will be from here on in.”) She also states she was eager to get back to work, but needed to help
Doyle “finish painting sculp. & etc. etc.”
3. Autograph letter signed, “Eva,” to Ethelyn Honig; n.d. [Fall 1964]; 4to.; one page, both sides;
blue onion-skin paper; light vertical and horizontal creases, one each; very minor edge wear and
corner bumping.
Most likely written in Fall 1964, based on references to an upcoming show of Doyle’s in March, and
a discussion of summer plans in England and Ireland. Hesse opens the message with a complaint about the German weather (“Cold & grey, all the days are this way.”), and then launches into what has become a landmark feminist statement about the unique struggle of women artists, one which may have been inspired by both her reading of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (who she calls her “temporary spokesman”) and her own personal experiences with Doyle and the monumental task of creating:
I wonder if we are unique. I mean the minority we exemplify. The female struggle, not in generalities but our specific struggle. To me insurmountable to achieve an ultimate expression requires the complete dedication seemingly only man can attain. A singleness of purpose no obstruction allowed seems a man’s perogative [sic]. His domain. A woman is side tracked by all her feminine roles from menstrual periods to cleaning house to remaining pretty and “young” and having babies. If she refuses to stop there she yet must cope with them. She’s at a disadvantage from the beginning. But worst her thought are not with the work as dedicatedly as is man. She also lacks conviction that she has the “right” to achievement. She also lacks the belief that her achievements are worthy. Therefore she has not the steadfastness necessary to carry ideas to the full developments. There are handfuls that succeeded, but less when one seperates [sic] the women from the women that assumed the masculine role.
A fantastic strength is necessary and courage.
(Quoted in both Lippard’s Eva Hesse (p. 205-06), and Stiles and Selz’s Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (pp. 593-4). Lippard also quotes Honig’s reply to this letter.)
Hesse additionally notes that while “her determination and will is strong” she lacked “the self esteem that I never seem to overcome,” and that she was “competing all the time with a man with self confidence in his work and is successful also.” However, she finishes the section with resolve and vigor:
Are we worthy of the struggle and will we surmount the obstacles. We are more than dillitantes [sic] so we can’t even have their satisfactions of accomplishment. The making of a “pretty dress” successful party — pretty picture does not satisfy us. We want to achieve something meaningful and to feel our involvements make of us valuable thinking persons.
4. Autograph letter signed, “Eva & Tom,” to Ethelyn Honig; n.d. [Early 1965]; 4to.; one page, recto only; white onion-skin paper; light vertical and horizontal creases, one each; very minor edge wear.
Hesse writes to Honig of her father’s bout of pneumonia and her worry over his well-being, her own health problems (low blood pressure, leg cramps) and medications (Librium), and her homesickness.
She states that while recently she had been “working well,” she was discouraged “that something or other always seems to prohibit any continuity or steadfastness where working is concerned. Now I’m supposed to rest.” This frustration appears to be connected to her comment near the beginning that “It’s been hard times again.”
5. Autograph letter signed, “Eva & Tom,” to Grace and Jerry Wapner; February 4, 1965; 4to.; one page, both sides; blue onion-skin paper; light vertical and horizontal creases, one each.
The opening line of this letter—“The days pass one like the other – grey and wet and quiet, I though not feeling that way inside”—provides the overall pessimistic tone of the remaining text. Hesse recounts in more detail the news concerning her father’s health issues, difficulties with their subtenants in New York (“further complicates matters for us 3000 miles away from home”), and her low blood pressure problems (“makes me feel 90 yrs old and ‘wasted’ & ‘wasteful’). She also refutes “the rumors about Toms being alternately, imprisoned, thrown out of Germany for 2 weeks all forms and sorts of absurdity,” providing an alternate story of Doyle’s involvement in a fight the previous summer in Basel (a trip referenced in Letter #1, Summer 1964, to Ethelyn Honig).
Hesse ends the letter on a positive note, though, joking with Wapner about failing her driver’s test (“I laughed upon reading but with you not at you”) and mentioning that four of her drawings were selected for exhibition in a Swiss gallery. The last paragraph is especially interesting, as it regards her continuing artistic explorations:
I have worked — the forms similar but it changes in degrees of clarity. Sometimes quite hard others more expressionistic. Still looking. Am never sure enough! That seems to the the [sic] “Old Sentimentality,” very uncool and not of the times.”
6. Autograph letter signed, “Eva,” to Ethelyn Honig; February 5 [1965]; 4to.; one page, both sides;
blue onion-skin paper; light vertical and horizontal creases, one each; very minor edge wear and
corner bumping.
Hesse initially relates issues surrounding the subletting of her studio back in New York (“Christ! It must work out somehow….”), but turns to her work on the second page, where she disclosed to Honig her continuing artistic difficulties: “I always try to work and eventually throw up my arms. My energy level is also rock bottom low so I sleep much — any rate the dr. here says it’s a natural by product of condition.”
However, the importance of this letter rests in Hesse’s illuminating description of the work she was attempting at that moment, which both reveals her evolving ideas on spatial relationships and anticipates her imminent transition into sculpture:
I did loads of drawings when we first came here — I told you — they were kind of wild forms, lots happening — fairly clear, fairly exciting. Tried painting, needed to paint them large since scale was important white space was important. — was eventually displeased so started drawing again this time thinking of them not as ends but studies for paintings. Therefore considered line less and tried working out forms. The forms were as crazy but hard and they were forced into confined areas. — Now I am painting again but just don’t know. The old story, defeatist, no patience — or just not sure what I really want it to be?
7. Autograph letter signed, “Eva,” to Grace and Jerry Wapner; June 23 [1965]; 4to.; one page,
both sides; blue onion-skin paper, with matching handwritten Air Mail envelope; light vertical
and horizontal creases, one each; very minor edge wear and corner bumping, with
horizontal tear near top of page, from right edge to near center of sheet.
Composed as Hesse was preparing for the first exhibition of her sculptural work at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, which was scheduled for early August. An important letter which not only recounts
Hesse’s feverish immersion in her new sculptural work, but the rancorous denouement of her
relationship with Doyle.
I have been very busy, working harder than ever in my life. I start each day at 7 A.M. and work through ————— like know a typical day 10:30 P.M. Doyle not to be seen. He drove off supposedly for an hour, hours ago.
…Am making crazy & wild things. For me very exciting and I work consistently and all the time. Other than the chaos that reigns.
Tom & I having bitch of a time. Ever since I started to work he kind of drifts. Is working too, I guess, but cooperates little and grows wilder. …He has this wild 22 yr. old sculptor friend and carrys [sic] on.
I don’t know since I am better he much worse.
Perhaps her most upbeat missive, Hesse also relates her schedule for leaving Germany and returning
to the United States in late August.
8. Autograph letter signed, “Eva & Tom,” to Ethelyn Honig. Kettwig, Germany: August 3, 1965.
Oblong 8vo. (5 3/4" x 4 1/8"); ALS; one page, recto and verso; non-pictorial; light cardstock; very minor edge wear and corner bumping.
Hesse begins the brief note with an accounting of her travels and visitors, and then describes her upcoming sculpture exhibition at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, which opened three days later, and her
final abandonment of two-dimensional work:
I have a room for my works. 12 objects or reliefs or constructions. Here it will be called OBJECTS & drawings. They are strange things — I am very excited am really working well. — also will show 6 drawings (last ones) and 16 small sketches.
Interestingly, she omits any references to her troubles with Doyle, and signs the card in both their names.
II. Photographs
1. Honig, Ethelyn. Eva Hesse at Allen Street Subway Station. Circa 1965-66.
3 1/4" x 3 1/2"; black-and-white glossy print, white border.
Taken after Hesse’s return to the United States from Germany.
2. Honig, Ethelyn. Doug Johns in Hesse Studio. 1969-70.
6 1/2" x 4 1/2"; black-and-white glossy print; notation in ink on back: “Doug, Eva’s assistant
in Eva Hesse’s studio.”
Doug Johns was employed as Hesse’s studio assistant after her return from Germany (Corby,
Eva Hesse, p. 37). In this image he is working on one of her rope and latex pieces.
3. [Honig, Ethelyn]. Rope and Latex Sculpture. 1969-70.
7" x 5"; black-and-white glossy print, white border.
A studio shot of Hesse’s iconic rope and latex pieces, created near the end of her life.
III. Exhibition Announcements
1. Eva Hesse. New York: Allen Stone Gallery, 1963.
6" x 4 3/4"; pictorial black-and-white postcard.
Addressed to Grace and Jerry Wapner. Signed by Hesse on recto.
An original announcement card for Hesse’s first one-person show at New York’s Allan Stone Gallery
in 1963.
2. Eccentric Abstraction. New York: Fischbach Gallery, 1966.
Square (10 1/4" x 10 1/4"); flexible, textured plastic substrate, printed in black on recto; one central horizontal fold.
Organized by Lucy Lippard, who would go on to write a noted biography of Hesse, this small group exhibition was one of Hesse’s first after returing to the United States, and also featured Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, Gary Kuehn, Bruce Nauman, Don Potts, Keith Sonnier, and Frank Lincoln Viner.
3. Eva Hesse, 1936-1970: Sculpture and Drawing. London: The Mayor Gallery, 1974.
5" x 8 1/2"; pictorial black-and-white postcard.
An announcement for one of the first major posthumous exhibitions of Hesse’s work, featuring
a 1970 photograph of Hesse on the recto.
References: Corby, Vanessa. Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010; Hughes, Robert. American Visions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999; Lippard, Lucy. Eva Hesse. New York: NYU Press, 1976; Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Howard Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
(#4654683)
Print Inquire
