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A woman with light colored skin, wearing a black top and white pants, talks to a group of people in a gallery room. She stands in front of a large, painted portrait of a woman in a high-collared red dress.
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National Museum of Women in the Arts

Study for Sculpture

Short, knotted cords, arranged in a symmetrical 9-by-9 grid emerge from a square panel and hang down. Thick, matte-gray paint coats the entire piece, adding rough texture to the panel and stiffening the cords into positions that cast irregular shadows across the work’s surface.
Eva Hesse, Study for Sculpture, 1967; Varnish, liquitex, Sculp-metal, and cord on Masonite, 10 x 10 x 1 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © The Estate of Eva Hesse, Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Close up of Study for Sculpture
Short, knotted cords, arranged in a symmetrical 9-by-9 grid emerge from a square panel and hang down. Thick, matte-gray paint coats the entire piece, adding rough texture to the panel and stiffening the cords into positions that cast irregular shadows across the work’s surface.

In her abstract sculptures, Eva Hesse modified the precision of 1960s Minimalism to emphasize the expressive and experimental essences of creativity. Hesse’s exploratory approach foreshadowed the multitude of processes and materials that characterize sculpture in our post-modern period. Hesse mined contradictions, developing sculptures that are simultaneously hard and soft, precise and irregular, solid and open, and intellectual and erotic. Her works often relate to the human body, and many are imbued with erotic undercurrents.

Study for Sculpture comprises a clear 9-x-9 grid, but the knotted cords hang in random positions. Hesse contrasted the tightness of the knots at the ends of the cords with the limpness of the cords themselves. Light and shadow play an important role in this work, as does the use of gravity as a shaping force.

Artwork Details

  • Artist

    Eva Hesse

  • Title

    Study for Sculpture

  • Date

    1967

  • Medium

    Varnish, liquitex, Sculp-metal, and cord on Masonit

  • Dimensions

    10 x 10 x 1 in

  • Donor Credit

    Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

  • Image Credit

    © The Estate of Eva Hesse, Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

  • On Display

    No

The Artist, Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse’s use of unconventional materials, such as rubber, cord, translucent fiberglass, and latex, made her one of the most original and influential sculptors of the 1960s.
A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned young woman with medium-length dark hair. She wears a black long-sleeved shirt, and is seated. She is covered in transluscent, thin, sheets of plastic, which she holds above her head and in her lap.