Eva Hesse has been dead for over 45 years. In the short time she had, she became an A- list artist whose work is sometimes classified as post-minimalist. The work is so different from anything else, you may not immediately be drawn to it. But the organic forms, the inventiveness of the materials, and the playfulness make it worth spending time with, and it still has a significant following and is displayed in major exhibits in the U.S, and Europe.
The film does a fine job with the spare resources available--old photos and film, augmented by interviews with people who knew Hesse well. It traces how Hesse's art developed across her brief career with many shots of the work itself along with Hesse's diary entries and comments by contemporaries, including famous ones like Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre.
The film also sketches her personal history, and you get a feeling for what she went through and how she responded to various life events, but as one of the men who loved her said, she really was mainly focused on her work.
The film does a fine job with the spare resources available--old photos and film, augmented by interviews with people who knew Hesse well. It traces how Hesse's art developed across her brief career with many shots of the work itself along with Hesse's diary entries and comments by contemporaries, including famous ones like Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre.
The film also sketches her personal history, and you get a feeling for what she went through and how she responded to various life events, but as one of the men who loved her said, she really was mainly focused on her work.
