Sheila Hicks: Fiber Art Pioneer

Sheila Hicks, born July 24, 1934 in Hastings, Nebraska, is an American textile artist who has blurred boundaries between art, craft, and architecture since the late 1950s. A central figure in American Fiber Art, her work gained major institutional recognition around 2010. She studied at Yale School of Art in 1954 under Josef Albers and George Kubler, then traveled to Chile on a Fulbright scholarship to photograph Andean weavers. She later settled in Mexico, collaborating with architects Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta, and founded her first weaving workshop, producing her 'Minimes'—small weavings serving as research sketchbooks. Since 1964, she has been based in Paris, creating monumental commissions for hotels, embassies, and public spaces from Mecca to the French National Assembly, while continuing her 'Minimes'. In 2014, her 'Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column' at the Whitney Biennial entered MoMA's collection. In 2017, 'Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands' was installed at the Arsenale for the 57th Venice Biennale. In 2018, the retrospective 'Lignes de vie' at Centre Pompidou, curated by Michel Gauthier, featured 145 works spanning six decades. Key works include 'The Evolving Tapestry: He/She' (1967–68), exhibited at MoMA's 1969 'Wall Hangings' show, and 'The Silk Rainforest' (c. 1975), commissioned for AT&T's Basking Ridge headquarters and later donated to the Smithsonian Institution.