The AMAM’s Eva Hesse archive includes several diaries, notebooks, and datebooks in which Hesse sketched and recorded thoughts about both her life and her work. These volumes, which cover over a decade of Hesse’s life, paint a nuanced picture of the artist. In the diary that Hesse kept while at studying at Yale University, she records the thrill of early success: “Terribly excited! Just feel it. Have been working hard! Feel good about work (my own). Stronger than ever before. Sold another painting.” In a draft of a letter that she wrote to her close friend Sol LeWitt during a stint in Germany, however, Hesse reveals a much less confident side of herself: “I trust myself not enough to come through with any one idea; or maybe a singular good idea does not exist. And if there would be one among the many I don’t think I could recognize it.”
On view in the Ripin Print Gallery through December 23, 2011.
Image:
Eva Hesse (American, born in Germany, 1936–1970)
Untitled, 1962
Collage, crayon, and pencil
Gift of Helen Hesse Charash, AMAM 1982.102.28
