Olga de Amaral, Exhibition from October 12, 2024 to March 16, 2025 at the Fondation Cartier in Paris
Born in 1932 in Bogotá, Colombia, Olga de Amaral started her career as an architect in her home country. During a period of great social and political unrest in Colombia, she decided in 1954 to move to the United States. She attended the Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Michigan where she discovered textile design and weaving under Marianne Strengell, a Finnish-American artist. Similar to Bauhaus, the Academy believed women were best suited to the Textile Department. In 1955 Amaral returned to Bogotá with a loom to work as a textile artist. In 1957 she married Tim Amaral, an American artist whom she had met at Cranbrook. Together they found the Telas Amaral decorative fabric company.
In 1962 Amaral began to weave on a vertical loom, experimenting with new weaving techniques, and she introduced geometric forms into her work, breaking the two-dimensionality of the woven surface. In 1965 she founded the Textile Department at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá which she headed until 1972.
Olga de Amaral worked on monumental pieces that reflected architecture and landscapes. In 1967 she was the first Latin-American artist to take part in the International Tapestry Biennial in Lausanne, where her work was selected on many subsequent occasions (1977, 1987 and 1992).
In 1968 she represented Colombia at the World Crafts Council (WCC) in Peru, where she visited the Gold Museum in Lima, Machu Picchu and the city of Cusco, leaving a deep impression on her.
In 1969 she had her first solo exhibition in Lima and was invited to the “Wall Hangings” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York together with Magdalena Abakanowicz, Anni Albers, Elsi Giauque, Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney.
In 1973 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing her and her family to spend one year in Paris. Her first solo show in Paris, “Murs tissées” (Woven Walls) was held at the La Demeure gallery in Paris. Within the space of three years she completed several commissions for new buildings, among them the monumental “Gran Muro” (Great Wall).
In 1981 Olga de Amaral’s work was exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
In 1983 she started her “Alquimias” (Alchemy) series produced in gold leaf, a light reflecting medium, and today there are 140 pieces in this series.
In 1992 the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá showed a major retrospective exhibition, “Quatro Tiempos“, featuring 140 of her works.
In 1993 she began her “Estelas“ series, which now consists of about 70 pieces.
In 1997 the Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine hosted her first solo exhibition in France.
In 2003 Olga de Amaral was invited to give a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entitled “The House of My Imagination“, which discussed her research into colours, materials and geometry as well as her sources of inspiration.
In 2013 she started her “Brumas“ series, composed of cotton threads coated with gesso, covered in acrylic paint and suspended from a wooden support. Rather than depicting places or landscapes, she intended to impact space in this very abstract way. Today this series consists of 34 works.
In 2017 Olga de Amaral took part in “Beyond Craft – Materials and Objects” held at the Tate Modern.
In 2018 she presented six “Brumas“ in the exhibition, “Southern Geometries from Mexico to Patagonia“ at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
Again in 2018, she had a show entitled “Light of Spirit – Olga de Amaral – a retrospective” at the Patinoire Royale in Brussels.
Then in 2024, her current retrospective exhibition showing about 78 works featured her work from the beginning; her latest “Brumas“ series, begun when she was 81 years of age, has its own gallery space; her oldest large-format series of architectural and landscape pieces occupies the largest room; and the basement presents Olga de Amaral’s explorations from her early work in the 1960s to her most recent creations, with an extra gallery devoted to her “Estelas“ finished with gold leaf.
What intrigued me most about her work was the consistency of her ideas that were once considered simply craft, but were recognised as fine art quite recently, around 2014. This has now led to her work gaining accolades from important institutions like the MoMu in New York, the Tate Modern in London and Fondation Cartier in Paris. She has been working with a team of seven Colombian craftswomen because she needed additional hands, as she writes in her catalogue article, “The House of My Imagination“. I regret that she did not mention them by name, but I see it as a strong point that these women were able to actually produce her work, and that they understood what she wanted to express. “Plaiting, weaving, and joining the different golden strands, strips, and cords allowed me to curve, bend and drape gold freely. However to fulfil my visions of vast imaginary landscapes, I wanted larger quantities of these woven golden elements. To make them, I needed additional hands with a certain state of mind, a certain pace, silence, concentration and love for the craft. Each of these hearts had to have a unique skill, be it weaving, cutting, soaking in tea, applying gesso or rice paper, painting or gilding, burnishing or stitching…….This team of weavers, this place, is my strongest and deepest connection with my country. To me they embody Colombia.“
Olga de Amaral is now 92 years old and has frequently changed the focus of her work dramatically, from sculptural and architectural pieces through working with gold leaf and Japanese paper, creating more meditative objects, to freely working with gesso and colour on threads to change the space itself.
And she still seems to inspire her public. One weaver friend said that she would now also like to work with small bands, interlacing them to make larger creations. Another friend who writes about textiles burst into tears viewing her work: so much softness and beauty, at this time of uncertainty and fear.
This, in fact, was the greatest surprise of all: everybody talked about the exhibition, one needed to book a ticket weeks in advance, and large groups of visitors waited at the entrance of the beautiful Fondation Cartier with its open architecture. Finally, textile art has returned to the days of the Lausanne Biennial, where we would go and see new textile creations like pilgrims to the Holy Grail. Textile art has reached the wider public again. The work of Olga de Amaral as well as the creations of the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota combined into a magnetic exhibition at the Grand Palais that was sold out weeks in advance. The exhibition “Au fil de l’or – the art of dressing“ at the Musée Quai Branly Jacques Chirac was very well visited too, not to mention the masses of people flocking to the Louvre for “Louvre Couture“, the very first fashion show held at the Louvre.
I was very happy to have the opportunity of visiting these exhibitions and will review them here on my blog in the coming weeks.
Beatrijs Sterk
