After winning the Sculpture prize of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, thanks to his work Neptune in 1953, Philippe Hiquily left school the following year along with Caesar, Albert Feraud and Michel Guino.

That same year, he met Germaine Richier, who encouraged him in his work and commissioned his bases for her own sculptures. She introduced him to the art critic Alain Jouffroy and allowed him to enter the Salon de Mai, of which she is co-founder along with Alfred Mannessier and Gaston Deihl.

In 1955, Hiquily exhibited at the gallery Palmes in Paris and then in New York in 1959, where he was critically acclaimed. There in New York, he met Rauschenberg, De Kooning, Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac and Marcel Duchamp, who introduced him to Tinguely.

In his exhibition at the Galerie du Dragon in Paris, he met Marie Laure de Noailles for which he created his first piece of furniture, a table whose top is in porphyry. Noticed by Henri Samuel, Hiquily began a long collaboration with prestigious clients such as the Rothschilds, the Broglie, Countess Van Zuilen and also Bobby Haas.

From 1960, he created furniture, furniture for the dreamlike and surreal mind. The creation of bronzes began around 1980.

Philippe Hiquily sculptures are characterized by a pervasive eroticism, translated into a smooth universe complemented with elements from nature (antennas, horns, insect legs ...). He worked mainly from recycled materials.

Hiquily had refused to bind himself to any movement. And yet, surrealism seems to mark his work. Using junk tied him with the New Realism movement although he did not give the material the importance given to it by this movement. With his mobile sculptures, he was also considered the precursor of Cinetic Art.

His works are in the collections of MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal, the Museum of Modern Art in Havana, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum Art Moderne in Saint Etienne.