There are many reasons why the glass architecture imagined by Jean Nouvel for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris is celebrated, one being its seamless integration with the ever-changing colours of the surrounding garden. With the launch of a retrospective celebrating Olga de Amaral, this connection is brought into sharp focus. The monumental textile works of the Colombian artist (b. 1932, Bogotá), a leading figure in fibre art, burst with vibrant tones of orange, brown and green, reflecting the hues of autumn. In this stunning setting, her pieces create a dynamic link between art and nature while highlighting the creative potential of textile art, an understudied medium partly due to its strong association with (and prejudice against) female artists.
De Amaral has long been acclaimed by critics for the unclassifiable nature of her art, even though the majority of her works rarely travelled beyond her native Colombia. This exhibition signifies a long-awaited recognition, bringing her work to the European stage. Featuring over 80 works, the retrospective offers a comprehensive view of a career that began in the 1950s, and has continuously evolved through relentless experimentation.
As I build surfaces, I create spaces of meditation, contemplation and reflection. Every small unit that forms the surface is not only significant in itself but is also deeply resonant of the whole.– Olga de Amaral
Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, de Amaral was sent to the United States during the years of La Violencia, Colombia’s civil conflict between liberals and conservatives (1948-1958). After earning a degree in architecture, her arrival in 1954 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art - where leading figures like Anni Albers were teaching - immersed de Amaral in an artistic culture dominated by abstraction. The Bauhaus philosophy underpinning the college’s practices encouraged her to develop a unique voice, which was further shaped upon her return to Colombia in 1955. There, the richness of pre-Columbian art and vernacular craft traditions offered a fertile ground for reinterpretation through the modernist lens she had embraced in the United States. Initially working as a textile designer alongside her husband Jim Amaral in their decorative textiles company, Telas Amaral, she gradually abandoned commercial utility for purely artistic expression.