Eva Hesse
No title, 1957 or 1958
sugarlifting etching
sheet: 37.15 x 28.58 cm (14 5/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
framed: 41.91 x 38.1 x 3.18 cm (16 1/2 x 15 x 1 1/4 in.)
image: 25.08 x 19.69 cm (9 7/8 x 7 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Avalon Fund and Gerald Cerny Fund
2020.7.2
Press images available

Eva Hesse (1936–1970) produced an extraordinarily inventive, influential body of work in her short career. Pioneering the use of unusual materials—including textiles, latex, and fiberglass—and individual sculptural forms, she ushered in a new conceptual era of sculpture and installation art in the 1960s. Although not known for her prints, Hesse produced at least 14 etchings, 17 lithographs, and two woodcuts early in her career. The Gallery has acquired two etchings that show Hesse's early fascination with texture, versatility of line, tensions between positive and negative space, and the expressive, vulnerable qualities of material and structural form. These works join one print, two drawings, and one sculpture by Hesse already in the Gallery's collection.