Philippe Hiquily

"French sculptor, born in Paris in 1925. He joined the Paris School “Les Beaux-Arts” from 1948 to 1953 and won the Critics' Prize at the Paris Biennial in 1959. He attended the workshops of sculptors Jean Tinguely and Germaine Richier, for which he made sculpture bases. He exhibited for the first time in 1955 at the gallery Palmes in Paris, then at the gallery “Contemporaries” in New York in 1959, where he met the great names of American art (Léo Castelli , Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Jasper Jones, Isamu Noguchi …).

The creation of bronzes began around 1980. Philippe Hiquily's sculptures are characterized by an omnipresent eroticism, which he translates into a smooth universe completed by elements borrowed from nature (antennas, horns, insect paws ...). The search for formal stability is obvious. He works mainly from recycled materials. Hiquily has always refused to bind himself to any movement. Surrealism seems to mark his work. The use of discarded objects brings him closer to the New Realism even if he did not give the material the importance this movement gave it. With his mobile sculptures, he has also been a precursor of Kinetic Art."