- January 11, 1936 Born at Israelite Hospital, Hamburg, Germany, the second daughter of Wilhelm and Ruth Marcus Hesse.
- November 1938 After Nazi pogrom, is sent to Amsterdam with sister Helen on a children’s train. In Amsterdam she is placed in a Catholic children’s home. They are reunited with her parents three months later. The family moves to London.
- June 1939 The Hesse family moves to Washington Heights section of New York City. Ruth Marcus Hesse is eventually hospitalized for severe depression.
- 1945 Wilhelm and Ruth Marcus Hesse divorce. Wilhelm remarries to Eva Nathansohn and cares for both children. Eva Hesse receives U.S. citizenship.
- January 1946 Ruth Marcus Hesse commits suicide.
- 1952 Graduates from High School of Industrial Arts, New York in June. In September, enters Pratt Institute of Design to study advertising design. Displeased with the program, she leaves in the middle of her second year.
- September 1954 Enters Cooper Union where she studies under Nicholas Marsicano, Neil Welliver, Will Barnet, Robert Gwathmey, and Victor Candell.
- June 1957 Graduates from Cooper Union and begins session at Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut on scholarship.
- September 1957 Enters Yale School of Art and Architecture where she studies under Josef Albers, Rico Lebrun, and Bernard Chaet.
- June 1959 Graduates from Yale with a B.F.A. She moves to 82 Jane Street in New York. Meets Claes and Patty Oldenburg through Irving Petlin, a fellow classmate from Yale.
- 1960 Rents studio space on Ninth Avenue with Phyllis Yampolsky.
- February 1961 Moves to a loft at 238 Park Avenue South that she shares with Eila Kokkinen.
- April 1961 Meets sculptor Tom Doyle. Participates in “21st International Watercolor Biennial” at the Brooklyn Museum, in “Drawings” at the Wadsworth Atheneum, and “Drawings, Three Young Americans” at the John Heller Gallery.
- November 21, 1961 Marries Tom Doyle and moves to Fifth Avenue and 15th Street.
- Summer 1962 In Woodstock, NY, makes first sculpture for the Ergo Suits Travelling Carnival.
- March 1963 “Eva Hesse, Recent Drawings,” her first one-person exhibition, opens on the 12th at the Allan Stone Gallery. Hesse and Doyle move to the Bowery between Broome and Grand Streets.
- June 1964 Hesse and Doyle leave for Kettwig-am-Ruhr, Germany for fourteen months.
- December 1964 Begins experimenting with three-dimensional construction.
- September 1965 Returns to New York.
- 1966 Separates from Doyle; marriage ends. In May exhibits Hang-Up, Ishtar, and Long Life in “Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism”at the Graham Gallery. Father dies in August. In October exhibits Metronomic Irregularity II, Several, and Ingeminate in “Eccentric Abstraction” at Fischbach Gallery.
- 1967 Participates in “Erotic Symbolist” panel at the School of Visual Art.
- 1968 Meets Douglas Johns at Aegis Reinforced Plastics on Staten Island and makes plans for fiberglass fabrication. In September begins teaching at the School of Visual Arts. Exhibits Seam in “Antiform” show at John Gibson Gallery in October. On November 16 her one-artist show opens at Fischbach Gallery, and in December Aught and Augment are exhibited in “Nine at Leo Castelli” show. Sans II is shown in Whitney Annual.
- 1969 In March exhibits Sans III and Vinculum II in “When Attitudes Become Form,” at Kunsthalle Bern and shows Contingent at the Finch College Museum’s “Art in Process IV” in December. Repetition III is sold to the Museum of Modern Art. Accretion is included in traveling exhibition organized by Lucy Lippard.
- 1970 In January Ennead is included in “String and Rope” at the Sidney Janis Gallery. Viniculum I, Untitled, and Untitled shown at Owens-Corning Fiberglass Center in May.
- May 29, 1970 After having received third operation for a brain tumor, Hesse dies in a New York hospital.
Jodi Kovach
MA 2003
