Born into a family of merchants with different roots: Scottish, Dutch, Welsh, Cherokee, Sheila Hicks he enrolled at Yale University in 1954, where he took classes with the likes of Bauhaus historical figure and famed color theorist Josef Albers, as well as George Kubler, a historian specializing in pre-Columbian art. This training will permanently encourage her to persevere in her chosen artistic path, that of creating textile works that break down the barriers between fine arts and applied arts. In her practice, while she created small abstract expressionistic paintings, in 1956 she produced her first Minimi, tiny weavings that served as a test bed for her future creations. In 1957-58 she traveled through Latin America to learn about weaving and embroidery techniques, then spent a year in France, where she met Raoul d'Harcourt, a specialist in pre-Inca textiles whose writings would have an influence on her. decisive. final thesis.
Hicks' work is in dialogue with the architecture that surrounds it
This propensity was born during his student years in the lectures of modernist architect Louis Kahn at Yale, then intensified during his residency in Mexico, where he befriended architects Félix Candela, Mathias Goeritz, and Luis Barragán. Over time it profoundly influenced his practice and led to projects with Eero Saarinen, Warren Platner, Gyo Obata, SOM, Kajima, Junzo Sakakura, Nikken Sekkei, Theo Crosby and Kevin Roche, among others. In the mid-1960s, after four years in Mexico, he moved to Paris and has lived there ever since, continuing his research at the crossroads of art, design and decoration. In his perfect fusion of modernism, abstraction, extra-Western traditions and savoir-faire, his sculptures and environments composed of wool, nylon, silk, linen or cotton sometimes merge with utilitarian objects, such as clothes, and can also become functional themselves, creating spaces in which visitors are invited to walk, lie down and relax. Whether stacks of large bales of fiber, cascades of colorful climbing plants, columns of pigmented threads, or even flexible tubes wrapped in wool, his works give pride of place to the materials that dictate their forms. His works are subject to the laws of gravity and determined by the architecture of the spaces that display them, suspended vertically and folded horizontally when they touch the ground, works that rise and stabilize by virtue of their own weight, in a spectrum of colors that modify the own perception of the space they inhabit. Hicks refuses to give her works any fixed, defined form, creating them in a spirit of free experimentation that evolves with the weaving process, with no other purpose than their own existence. His ductile and labile sculptures prefigure the Anti-Form and Post-Minimalist movements that made extensive use of fabric.
© Sheila Hicks / Adagp, 2024
Photo credits: © Kwa Yong Lee / Louis Vuitton
Atterrissage [Landing] (2014) and Another Break in The Wall (2016) are emblematic of Sheila Hicks' work. These two iconic pieces, which are part of the Collection, are presented for the first time in Korea.
Work on the cover ANOTHER BREAK IN THE WALL 2016
© Sheila Hicks / Adagp, 2024
Photo credits: © Kwa Yong Lee / Louis Vuitton
