Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

In the fall/winter of 2024/25, the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will present the first major solo exhibition of the US-American artist Sheila Hicks (*1934) across cities and for the first time in Germany.

Sheila Hicks’ unique oeuvre unfolds in the interplay between material, color and space: In large and small-format wall works, tapestries, reliefs, sculptures and installations, the seemingly infinite possibilities of these three dimensions unfurl. “What can you do with thread?” is the question that the artist has tirelessly explored since studying with Josef Albers at the Yale School of Art in the 1950s. In her pursuit, she has explored a wide spectrum of techniques that constantly challenge and surprise our perception and our concepts of art and textile, color and structure, work and space.

Held jointly at the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the exhibition will present the artist’s entire oeuvre. The Josef Albers Museum is presenting a retrospective on the 700 square meters of the award-winning Gigon/Guyer extension building. It brings together works from the period from 1955 to 2024, including early paintings from her time as a student of Josef Albers that have never been shown. Early textile works, projects from her time in Chile, Mexico and Morocco, designs for large architectural commissions and her more recent color-intensive wall objects, sculptures and installations will also be on display, complemented by sketches and materials from the artist’s archive. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf will subsequently present a more comprehensive view of Sheila Hicks’ current artistic production: large-format, partly site-specific installations and sculptures unfold their intense power in contrast to the brutalist architecture of the exhibition spaces and also show the artist’s latest experiments with materials and forms.

Comprising over 250 works from all creative periods, the collaborative exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of the 90-year-old artist’s multifaceted oeuvre for the first time in Germany. The show follows numerous extensive international exhibitions, including at the Centre Pompidou Malaga (2023), the Kunstmuseum Sankt Gallen (2023), the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (2020), the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Chile (2020) and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA (2019).

The Kunststiftung NRW, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kulturstiftung der Länder and the Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Bottrop fund the exhibition.

An extensive educational and supporting program will accompany the exhibition. The exhibition will give occasion to the first comprehensive publication on Sheila Hicks in German.