More than 130 works by the artist Eva Hesse, whose influential career as a painter and sculptor was cut short by her early death in 1970, are on loan from the Allen Memorial Art Museum to two ground-breaking exhibitions of her work now on view in New York City.

The Allen is a major repository both of Hesse’s art and of archival material related to her life and work.

Eva Hesse Drawing, on view at The Drawing Center through July 15, includes 77 drawings, sketches and notebooks from the Allen, while Eva Hesse: Sculpture, on view at The Jewish Museum through September 17, 2006, includes 54 items from the Allen.

“We are very pleased to generously support these two major exhibitions that coincide with the 70th anniversary of Hesse’s birth,” says Stephanie Wiles, John G.W. Cowles Director of the Allen. ”The Allen is also collaborating with Yale University Press and the Eva Hesse Estate to publish facsimile editions of two important datebooks from 1964 and 1965, when Hesse and her husband, sculptor Tom Doyle, lived in Germany. These datebooks contain rich personal details about Hesse’s life and her development as an artist.” The facsimile editions, published by Yale, will appear in August 2006. (See http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300111096 ).

Eva Hesse Drawing—recently chosen by the Village Voice newspaper as a “Best in Show” exhibition—highlights more than 100 works by Hesse, including a selection of sketchbooks and notebooks. The exhibition also features representative works from each period of Hesse’s mature phase—and examples of her very early drawings. It will travel to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art from August 6 to October 23 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from November 12, 2006 to February 17, 2007.

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1936, Hesse and her family fled from the Nazis to New York in 1939. As a young woman, Hesse studied at the Cooper Union and the School of Art and Architecture at Yale University. She was first active as a painter and draftsman and later began making powerfully inventive sculptures in a range of materials.

Hesse made her first sculptures during a year-long stay in Germany in 1965, and it became her primary means of expression for the next five years until her early death of a brain tumor at the age of 34.

Oberlin College is also well-known for its excellent art history department. Two Drawing Center staff members are Oberlin graduates: Elizabeth Metcalf ’84 is acting executive director, and Katherine Carl ‘91 is curator of contemporary exhibitions.