Sheila Hicks
Le fleuve blanc / White River
2018
Linen
Height : 540cm
Pioneering fiber artist Sheila Hicks blurs the boundary between painting and sculpture with her vibrant woven and textile works, which she creates in many shapes and sizes, from wall mountings that mimic the format of painting to suspended pieces that hang from ceiling to floor like textured columns. Hicks studied at Yale under the famed color theorist Josef Albers and was encouraged by Albers’ textile artist wife, Anni, to travel and investigate the artisanal fabrics of Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, experiences that proved formative to Hicks’ artistic development. Her use of “domestic” mediums differed radically from the rigid industrial techniques of the Minimalists and hard edges of the abstract painters prominent amongst her contemporaries; Hicks is closely aligned with Eva Hesse, her fellow student and fellow innovator of sculpture made from soft, atypical materials.
Courtesy of artsy.net, gagosia.com