The Pillars

“I’m willing to balance on the edge, and if I haven’t managed it, that’s where I want to go.” 
The statement is from Eva Hesse, the artist who turned almost all the rules for what sculpture should be upside down, before she died of a brain tumour just 34 years old, in 1970.  

Before Hesse transitioned to sculpture, she was a painter and illustrator. In “The Pillars”, Hesse is represented with the painting Untitled, a picture that shows how she worked with Abstract Expressionism, before she embarked on making fragile sculptures from organic materials such as wax, hemp and latex. 

The Pillars presents works of art created by ground-breaking international artists, most of whom have not been represented in the National Museum until now. These works expand the museum’s narratives about the present and our recent past by showing other voices and perspectives.  

Several of the artists included in the collection have struggled to gain recognition. Sometimes this was because they had the “wrong” gender, gender identity, or cultural background, or perhaps because they worked with artistic strategies that rejected established norms. The collection spans almost one hundred years, from the 1920s to the present day. Works by the following artists are currently on display in The Pillars: Georgia O’Keeffe, Sheila Hicks, Simone Leigh og Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.