About This Artwork

During her prolific but short career, Eva Hesse played a major role in the “Process” or “Anti-Form” movements in the United States during the 1960s. In response to the reductive formalism of Minimalist sculpture, Hesse explored the expressive possibilities of abstraction by creating objects that were emotive, ironic, and even absurd. A sculpture about painting, Hang Up privileges painting's most marginal feature—the frame—and playfully ignores the medium's inherent two-dimensionality by means of the cord that protrudes awkwardly into the gallery space. Hesse produced an extraordinarily original and influential body of work, pioneering the use of eccentric materials, such as Latex, and expressive, idiosyncratic sculptural forms before her tragically premature death.