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Knoll Designer Bios

Sheila Hicks

b. USA, 1934

After studying painting at Yale University, Sheila Hicks began weaving and producing fabrics in Central and South America in the early 1960s. Attracted to her hand-woven aesthetic, Knoll International collaborated with Hicks in 1966 to produce Inca. The woven upholstery design proved highly successful worldwide and has been revived many times since its original introduction.

Choosing to remain on the periphery of the mainstream art world, Hicks has consistently blurred the lines between art, craft and design. Splitting her time between New York and Paris, Sheila Hicks has enjoyed a long and celebrated career creating tapestries, wallcoverings, and woven paintings. Her work has been shown across the globe and is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou.