Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks (born July 24, 1934, Hastings, Nebraska, U.S.) is an American artist renowned for her groundbreaking approach to textile art, creating fiber works that defy traditional two-dimensional forms. Her work incorporates raw materials, such as linen flax, wool, synthetic threads, and industrial fibers as well as found objects, including shells, feathers, and clean hospital laundry. It is marked by vivid colors and sculptural shapes that are freestanding or that sprout from gallery walls and ceilings.

Early life and education

Hicks was the eldest child of Frances Hicks (née Weingart) and Ray Hicks and had two brothers, William Hicks and John Hicks. All three children were born during the Great Depression, and the family frequently traveled throughout the Midwest as Ray Hicks looked for work. During World War II they settled in Detroit, where he was employed by the U.S. government, and afterward they moved to Chicago. Sheila Hicks and her brothers often visited Hastings, Nebraska, where their grandparents ran a general store. Through her mother and grandmother Hicks learned to draw, paint, spin thread, sew, weave textiles, and dye fabric.

In 1952 Hicks enrolled at Syracuse University in New York and two years later transferred to Yale University. She studied with painter and sculptor Josef Albers, whose teachings on color influenced her work, and with art historian George Kubler, whose classes in pre-Columbian art from South America drew Hicks to textiles and weaving.

Hicks received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 and was awarded a Fulbright grant, which allowed her to paint and to study ancient Andean weaving in Chile (1957–58). She taught in the architecture department of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and traveled throughout South America, stopping to learn from weavers in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. Her fabrics and photographs were shown in solo shows in Chile and Argentina. She returned to Yale to receive a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1959.

Life in Mexico and then Paris

That same year Hicks moved to Taxco el Viejo, Mexico, where she studied and collaborated with Indigenous textile artists. She married a beekeeper, Henrik Tati Schlubach, and had a daughter, Itaka Schlubach. Her work was shown at the Galería Antonio Souza (1961), Mexico City; La Piña Gallery (1963), La Jolla, California; and the Art Institute of Chicago (1963). By 1964 her marriage had ended, and Hicks had moved to Paris with her daughter. There she set up her atelier, married Chilean artist Enrique Zañartu, and had a son, Cristobal Zañartu.

Early works

Hicks began to gain recognition with commissions from Eero Saarinen for his newly constructed CBS building (1965) and from Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo for their recently built Ford Foundation building (1967); both of the buildings were located in Manhattan. For the former, she designed a hanging at the restaurant and, for the latter, two linen and silk tapestries with neatly embroidered golden medallions. Her entry for the 1967 Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie, in Lausanne, Switzerland, defied the standard definitions of a tapestry. She told The New York Times in 2011, “I showed something I had just made in Chile, out of linen, with clusters of long, free-hanging cords suspended from the ceiling....It became a running joke. What is tapestry and what is not?”

Artwork

Indeed, for more than 60 years Hicks has created art that resists categorization. Her structural experiments encompass draped fabrics with fringes or tassels, textured tapestries, and fibers made into sticks or wheels. Some of her works have no fixed form, such as the sculptural fiber pile The Evolving Tapestry: He/She (1967–68), which is presented differently each time it is exhibited. Other pieces are stacked against a wall, such as the monumental Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands (2016–17). A few are raw threads or woven fabrics that cascade from walls or ceilings, such as Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column (2013–14).

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe

1 of 2

2 of 2

Hicks’s techniques include weaving, wrapping, piling, braiding, stitching, twining, bundling, and anchoring. Some of her works, such as the “minime” woven mats she often creates on a small, wooden frame, are the size of a sheet of paper. Others are much larger. For the Fuji City Cultural Centre in Japan, for example, Hicks created Four Seasons of Mount Fuji (1993–95), a tapestry the size of a football field in a dazzling array of colors.

Exhibitions and collections

Throughout her career, Hicks has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Major retrospectives include “Sheila Hicks: 50 Years” (2010) at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts; “Lignes de Vie” (2018: “Lifelines”) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; and “A Little Bit of a Lot of Things” (2023) at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland. Her art is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Tate Galleries in London, Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.