Born 1949 in Düsseldorf

1976  Studied "Integration Art & Architecture" at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Prof. Erich Reusch, master student 

1982  Ernst Poensgen Scholarship

1992  Skulpturenpark am Seestern Scholarship

2022/23  Funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW

Since 1990 dialogue-projects in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut on the subject of integration & migration

He lives and works in  Düsseldorf and elsewhere. 

At the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Hesse studied with Erich Reusch in his class for "Integration of Visual Arts and Architecture". Sculptures by Ernst Hesse stand both in the urban context of complex traffic situations - and in nature in the focusing frame, through which one looks into the distance and which thus sets proximity and distance in relation to each other. For the World Cup in Japan, Hesse created the sculpture "..global frame for friendship"(2000) in Fukuroi from Corten steel. 

In addition to imposing large formats, Ernst Hesse has created sculptures that remain in small, even tiny, compressed format. They carry the energy of the whole room, he says, and so it is. As round or drop shapes structured in themselves, they sometimes resemble fruits. As bronzes they develop a rich spectrum of iridescent tones, in iron with the velvety texture they immediately carry the earthiness of cult objects.

With great intensity Hesse has long devoted himself to the figure of bread. You can say he collects its forms. He searches for the loaves all over the world, baked by local bakers - often in family tradition - and thus researches their distribution, but also their form and asks how it comes to be. In addition to photographic works, he casts individual of these loaves in iron and in bronze. A few years ago, an exhibition at the German Bread Museum in Ulm made it clear how much baked breads differ from region to region.

Exhibitions, projects and lectures:

Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA.