Hiquily: Marbella-Shanghai Weathervanes Project

Mobiles, Gyrophales and tightrope walkers … in the 1960s Philippe Hiquily liked to play with the astonishing visual oxymoron of aerial steel. It’s all about movement and balance. One of his Spanish collectors, impressed by his work, then offered him a project as crazy as it was grandiose. Create a set of 12-meter-high Monumental Weathervanes for his property in Marbella, installed on the highest access to Elviria beach, to reveal the beauty of the place and match the winds blowing on the spot.

46 years later the project is reborn, over 10,000 km away. The city of Shanghai is preparing to host the 2010 World Expo and is keen to have more art and culture. Jing’An Park is intended to be transformed into a sculpture park for the occasion and the works of several artists such as Arman, César and Hiquily are chosen to represent French sculpture in formats of 2 to 3 meters height. But Hiquily, a maverick as he always was, aims higher. He chooses to reinterpret his Weathervanes from 1963 while retaining their monumental format of 12 meters high. The organizing committee of the Universal Exhibition is then so enthusiastic about his project that this work will become the pillar of the exhibition and that the city of Shanghai decides to acquire the work and install permanently at entrance to the park.

This is how these three 12-meter-high Weathervanes, proud representatives of the exceptional mastery of the material and the spirit that characterizes the artist Philippe HIQUILY, planted their vertiginous altitudes and their aerial lines on Chinese soil. Elegant and modern forms, symbolizing human know-how in the assembly of metals and architectural forms, they come to submit, humbly, to the whims of nature, accumulating the energies of nature to provide the inhabitants of the city who come in the park to dance or relax, the breath of life necessary for the accomplishment of great things.

This story touched even the artist to the point that he subsequently produced for his Taiwanese gallery owner who had participated in this project, four Weathervanes representing the four seasons of the year.

The artist

Philippe Hiquily

Born in Montmartre in 1925, Philippe Hiquily is a very singular artist, sculptor, but also creator of furniture, jewellery, etchings and experimental kinetic and electronic works. The main axis of his work is to play with shapes and balance but also the “coupling” of sculptures and objects. May they be in iron, brass or steel there are always principles behind his sculptures, art must be funny, playful and esthetical. Movements, curves and materials are as many ways to give life to metal that is metamorphosed in an erotic object. From New York to Paris, museums of tribal art to the salon of French aristocracy, this lover of women, protégé of Germaine Richier, friend of Arman, César, Jodorowsky or Alain Jouffroy, this very convivial and great cigar lover, Officer of the National Order of Arts and Letters, has always known, throughout his life, how to completely overwhelm our view of sculpture.