Olga de Amaral
The first major retrospective of pioneering Colombian textile artist Olga de Amaral, known for her use of gold leaf, is the latest major exhibition at Paris’ Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. For the occasion, VAULT considers the nonagenarian’s legacy with the help of curator Marie Perennès.
Image credit: Installation view, Olga de Amaral, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, October 12, 2024 to March 16, 2025. Photo: Marc Domage. Courtesy Lisson Gallery
Olga de Amaral is an alchemist; she paints shapes in space with thread. Her art is a triumph of geometry, spiritualism and the phenomenology of colour, rooted in the centuries-old Andean traditions of weaving and handicrafts dating back to the pre-Columbian era. A pioneer among textile and Latin American artists, de Amaral has enjoyed a cosmopolitan existence, living at various times in the United States and Paris before returning to live and work in her native Bogotá.
Born in 1932 in Bogotá, de Amaral grew up in the tradition-rich central district of Teusaquillo. She first studied architectural drawing in Bogotá and then, in the 1950s, relocated to the United States to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan just “as The Violence [La Violencia, a ten-year conflict between the Liberal and Conservative political parties of Colombia] increased in Bogotá and in Colombia.” This early education had a lasting effect on the young artist’s life both personally – it was in Michigan that she met the Portuguese-American artist Jim Amaral, who she would go on to marry – and professionally. “Cranbrook is very close to the Black Mountain College,” explains curator Marie Perennès, “where there is a very strong Bauhaus philosophy. She studied their textile design for industrial purposes; her career started in textile design practice for furniture and automobiles, and when she returned to Bogotá that practice allowed her to live and start a studio.”
What Olga de Amaral calls her “basic units” are strips of interwoven linen (one of her favourite materials) and cotton (materially ‘pure’, a concept that arises at ... Subscribe to read all articles in full
