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“Where does drawing begin and where does drawing end and painting begin? . . . My own drawings now are—they are really paintings on paper but I call them drawings. But they really are not. There is no difference between the painting except that it is smaller and on paper. It’s a canvas and a sculpture.”

–Eva Hesse

At a time when abstraction was at the forefront of artistic developments, associations with organic figures remained central to Hesse’s work. In her biography of Hesse, art critic and friend of the artist, Lucy Lippard describes Hesse’s two-dimensional works as “a vocabulary of shapes that longed to be independent of the page.” There’s an uncontrollable quality to Hesse’s drawings, paintings, and sculptures. With her playful arrangements she invented a new platform for artistic production centered on the body and latent eroticism.

Image: No Title, 1964, Eva Hesse, American (born in Germany), 1936–1970, oil on canvas, 61 x 41 1/2 in., Gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2014.25.30, © Estate of Eva Hesse.