The earliest drawing in this retrospective dates from 1958 and the latest from 1969, the year before Eva Hesse died. The rich and comprehensive selection provides a unique opportunity to study works that are now dispersed and rarely seen apart from the sculpture. But despite the quality of the curatorial selection and the beauty of individual drawings, especially the gouaches, the exhibition resonates because of the constant foreshadowing of and relationship to the ideas and forms of the sculpture.

Ellen Johnson, who curated the show for the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio, makes a