Works by Maria Pergay + Sheila Hicks
Demisch Danant
Booth G12
Meridian Avenue and 19th Street
Miami Beach


Demisch Danant is pleased to announce Maria Pergay: The 1970s, an exhibition devoted to a pivotal period in the career of the renowned French designer. On view in the gallery’s stand (G12) at Design Miami, the exhibition comprises a selection of Maria Pergay’s most iconic works of the 1970s, set in a Parisian-style domestic environment at the fair and accompanied by early fiber works of the 1970s by esteemed Paris-based American artist Sheila Hicks.

In 1968, Maria Pergay presented her first collection of stainless steel furniture at Galerie Maison et Jardin under the direction of decorator Jean Dive. This seminal exhibition established Pergay as one of the most innovative French furniture designers of her time, a visionary who almost single-handedly transformed stainless steel from a commercial industrial material into a principal component of Modern furniture. With such objects as Wave Desk (1968) and Daybed(1968), she domesticated the cold, hard, and geometric effects of steel, sometimes coupling the metal with leather or fur and rendering something altogether new– something with a distinctively elegant and sensual but very daring air. Throughout the ensuing decade, Pergay collaborated with foremost manufacturers and embarked upon significant commissions for Pierre Cardin, The World Trade Center in Brussels, the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, and other significant clients internationally. The work she produced in the 1970s has entered into the canon of design history – Pergay’s Wave Bench (1968) is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for example – and laid the groundwork for a practice that continues uninterrupted today. At Design Miami, Maria Pergay: The 1970s will provide a context for a presentation at the fair by renowned Italian luxury goods company FENDI, showcasing new objects it has commissioned from Maria Pergay.

As a compliment and counterpoint to Pergay’s furniture, Demisch Danant will present several wall works by Sheila Hicks. After studying fine art at Yale under the tutelage of Josef Albers, Nebraska-born Hicks traveled and lived in Mexico and Chile, then settled in Paris in 1964. She soon established herself as one of the most innovative textile artists of the 20th century, sharing with such creators as Pergay an affinity for surprising materials and a deftness at challenging accepted notions about them. She is renowned for her painterly approach to textile design and an ability to craft environments through the unlikely medium of fiber. Hicks has collaborated with prominent architects including Luis Barragán, Ricardo Legorreta and Skidmore Owings & Merrill, among others. Her work, which resides in major museums around the world, defies categorization, simultaneously addressing several related mediums including painting, sculpture, design, and installation.