Olga de Amaral at Foundation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France
27 September 2024
From 12 October 2024 – 16 March 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain presents the first major retrospective in Europe of Olga de Amaral, a key figure of the Colombian art scene and of Fiber Art. The exhibition brings together works made between the 1960s and now, many of which have never been shown before outside of Colombia. Beyond the vibrant goldleaf pieces for which the artist is renowned, the exhibition reveals her earliest explorations and experimentations with textile, as well as her monumental works.
In this exhibition, the Fondation Cartier foregrounds the boldness of textile art, long marginalized due to the perception of it as a decorative art essentially practiced by women. Resolutely entwined with the dynamics of post World War II abstract art, Amaral’s ambitious production deviates from the conventional framework of traditional tapestry. The retrospective notably showcases her vital contribution to the artistic avant-garde of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. This exhibition offers a fresh and exhaustive perspective on her career and unveils the full complexity of her artistic practice. Without adopting a strictly chronological order, it shines a light on the different periods that have characterized her artistic career: from her formal explorations, her use of the grid and color, to her experimentationation with materiality and scale.
Since the 1960s, Olga de Amaral has been expanding the boundaries of the textile medium, continually experimenting with different materials (linen, cotton, horsehair, gesso, goldleaf, palladium) and techniques: she weaves, knots, braids, and interweaves threads to create monumental three-dimensional pieces. Her unclassifiable work draws equally from the Modernist principles that she discovered at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States, and the vernacular traditions of her country, as well as pre-Columbian art. Having presented six works from the Brumas series as part of the Southern Geometries exhibition in 2018, the Fondation Cartier is now retracing Amaral’s entire career, celebrating the figure who helped spark a true revolution in the textile arts.
Find out more via Foundation Cartier.
Image © Olga de Amaral, courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. Photography by Marc Domage.
