Toxic art materials may have contributed to Eva Hesse’s death at thirty-four

Evidence

Schjeldahl tastefully omitted Mark Rothko’s shocking suicide in February and thirty-four-year-old sculptor Eva Hesse’s tragic death two months later, victim of a brain tumor perhaps exacerbated by toxic elements she used in her sculpture. (“Her death brought down the curtain on a whole period of art life in New York,” Mel Bochner would say. “It closed the Sixties.”) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1588

Categorization

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