Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks is an American artist known for her innovative and experimental weavings and sculptural textiles. Her art incorporates distinctive colours, natural materials, and personal narratives. Born during the Great Depression in Hastings, Nebraska, Hicks spent much of her early life on the road, with her father seeking work where he could find it. This ‘fantastic upbringing’ with its ‘migratory existence: modest but full of adventure’, as she has described it in an interview with Lainey R. Sidell (‘Wisdom: Artist Sheila Hicks on Success, Intuition, and “Not Wanting” a Legacy’, Surface Magazine, 14 May 2019), has come to define her six-decade-long career as an artist. Extensive experiences of travelling, living, and working (around the world) continue to advance her exploration of textiles, the pliable and adaptable medium with which she is most closely associated. ‘Textile is a universal language. In all of the cultures of the world, textile is a crucial and essential component.’ Hicks has said.

Despite the harsh realities of her childhood years, Hicks attended Syracuse University, New York, for a couple of years before transferring to the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, between 1954 and 1959, where she studied painting with Josef Albers (1888–1976, German-born American artist and educator who is considered one of the most influential 20th-century art teachers in the United States), whose seminal book The Interaction of Color heralded new approaches to the study of colour and left a lasting impact on Hicks’s work. While at Yale, Hicks also discovered textiles and weaving while working with George Kubler (1912–1996, American art historian, among the foremost scholars on the art of pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art, as well as Sterling Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, 1975-1983), who encouraged her to travel abroad in order to expand her knowledge and understanding of the medium.

Upon completing her undergraduate degree (BFA) in 1957, Hicks received a Fulbright grant to paint and study ancient Andean weaving in Chile, using the funds to travel across the entire continent and explore its rich artistic traditions. Hicks once told Jennifer Higgie about this life-changing trip (‘Fibre Is My Alphabet. Jennifer Biggie talks to Sheila Hicks about the 60-year evolution of her artistic talent’, interview in Frieze Magazine, Issue 169, 20 February 2015):

Yes, I went to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and photographed extensively. Then I went back to Yale, since Albers had said to me that, if I returned, he would count the period I spent traveling as fieldwork. It became part of my Masters degree in painting. Junius Bird was my thesis advisor. He was an archaeologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York, and the keeper of its extensive collection of pre-Incaic textiles. My interest in textiles didn’t mean I stopped painting – I loved it – but my fascination with coloured lines and inventing pliable two- and three-dimensional structures slowly overtook every other enthusiasm.

From 1959 until 1964, Hicks lived and worked in Taxco el Viejo, Mexico, honing her skills as a fibre artist and learning from local traditional textile craftspeople. Here she also painted and taught at the UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In 1964, she made her way to Paris, where she continues to operate a studio (whilst dividing her time between Paris and New York). She has travelled extensively throughout her career, setting up workshops in Mexico, Chile, and South Africa; developing commercially woven fabrics in India and tufted rugs in Morocco; and realising large-scale commissions in the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. In each place, she has mined local knowledge to inform work that transcends geographic boundaries.

Hicks has exhibited internationally in solo as well as group exhibitions. In 2010 a retrospective of Hicks’ 50-year career originated at the Addison Gallery, Andover, Massachusetts, U.S.A., with additional venues at the ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts, in Philadelphia, U.S.A., and at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A. The exhibition included both miniature works (her ‘minimes’) and large-scale sculptures. Recent solo presentations include Lignes de Vie/Life Lines, displaying more than 100 works, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2018); Music to My Eyes at Alison Jacques, London (2021); Sheila Hicks: Off Grid, at the Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2022); and New Work: Sheila Hicks at SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (2025-2026).

Hicks has also been included in the 2012 São Paulo Biennial in Brazil; the 2014 Whitney Biennial in New York, NY, U.S.A. (where her 18-foot-high Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column was on display); and the 2017 Venice Biennal, Viva Arte Viva, in Venice, Italy.

Among the many official honours and recognitions bestowed upon Hicks could be mentioned the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2010) and honorary doctorates from École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2014),and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. (2019). Hicks has also been appointed Officier of the French Ministry of Culture’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1993) and Chevalier of the French Légion d’Honneur (2022), as well as receiving the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts (2023).In 2025 she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hicks work is represented in the following prestigious public collections: Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.; Industriet Museum, Oslo; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany; Kunstmuseum, Oldenburg, Germany; Manufacture des Gobelins, Paris; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A.; Musée de la Mode et du Textile, Paris; Musée de la Tapisserie, Angers, France; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Musée des Beaux Arts, Brest, France; Musée des Beaux Arts, Pau, France; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY, U.S.A.; Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; Museum of Design, Zürich, Switzerland; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.; Nebraska Museum of Art, Kearney, Nebraska, U.S.A.; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, North Dakota, U.S.A.; Okawa Museum of Art, Kiryu, Japan; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.; Renwick Gallery, Washington DC; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY, U.S.A.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Tate Museum, London; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.; and Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

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