See
Sheila Hicks, Travelling Threads at the Centre Pompidou Malaga
Her work defies convention and categorisation. From studying with Josef Albers at Yale in the 1950s, her six-decade long career has taken her from magazine editor to working on the set design for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Having studied painting, sculptor, photography and drawing, Hicks has been drawn to textiles, and works intuitively more like a painter, rather than any traditional artist.
“I don’t want to go do something I know how to do. I want to go do something I don’t know how to do.” Sheila Hicks
A great admirer of pre-Colombian textiles, Hicks has travelled and lived extensively in South America and across the world. Her work can now be found in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago and the Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam.
This monograph exhibition, the first solo exhibition in Spain, does not follow a chronological order, yet instead plunges the visitor into the universe of the artist, that of texture, form and colour. Textiles are the material with which we have most contact throughout our lives; cotton clothing, silk, linen and wool wrap the body daily. It is the same material with which Hicks sculpts, paints and colours a space.
The artist’s work cannot be classified yet is absolutely memorable. Hicks moves across art, design and decoration, from a Modernist legacy to Eastern traditions and from architectural dimensions to small fabric details.
With a six-decade career behind her, Hicks is one of the most original textile artists having studied sculpture, photography, and drawing, and brings together her rich life experience. Born in Nebraska, USA in 1934, Hicks is now resident in Paris.
‘Sheila Hicks: Threads That Travel’ – initiated and curated by Michel Gauthier, curator of Sheila Hicks’ solo exhibition ‘Lifelines’ which took place at Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2018 – now at the Centre Pompidou Malaga, Spain until 10 September 2023.
Sheila Hicks is represented by Alison Jacques, London.
Hero image: Lianes de Beauvais, 2011-2012. Variable dimensions. Linen, pearl cotton, wool, silk and nylon © Sheila Hicks, VEGAP, Málaga.