In the catalogue accompanying “Eva Hesse Spectres 1960”, which is currently on view at The Brooklyn Museum, Louise S. Milne, Lecturer at the Edinburgh College of Art, wonders about the merits of the early paintings by Eva Hesse (1936–70). Milne does so obliquely, but the question is pointed all the same: “If we did not have Hesse’s later achievements in sculpture with which to compare them, what would we make of these works?” Hesse’s pictures, all painted during 1960 and centered on the female form, have rarely been exhibited and are relatively unknown. Of the fifty or so extant pieces, nineteen of them are on display in the Elizabeth E. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Hesse devotees are likely to consider “Spectres 1960” an event.
And Hesse devotees are an impassioned bunch, a passion bred as much by the artist’s biography as by the art. The daughter of German Jews, Hesse and her sister Helen were placed on the Kindertransportand sent to Holland after the events of Kristallnacht. The Hesse family reunited in London early in 1939 and immigrated to New York City a few months later. Hesse’s parents separated in 1944; her mother committed suicide two years later. After attending Pratt Institute and Cooper Union, Hesse settled in at Yale, studying art with Josef Albers and Rico Le-Brun. “The hell with them all” wrote Hesse in response to the bruising critiques offered by the two opposing polemicists. “You must come to terms with your own