This untitled work is one of the last paintings made by Eva Hesse before she switched to sculpture. Its deconstructed symbols, figures, and shapes evoke natural forms and bodies without ever being directly identifiable. Delicate brushwork, soft colors, and a light, witty touch lend this work a feminine quality that she intended as a rebuke to the masculinity of Minimalist art. Hesse was reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex at this time, and the text led her to question her own fragmented status as artist, woman, and wife. Her work, though not overtly political, explores these issues in poetic, expressive abstractions.