Olga de Amaral

From October 12, 2024 to March 16, 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will present the first major retrospective in Europe of Olga de Amaral, an emblematic figure of the Colombian art scene and of Fiber Art. Gathering a hundred works by the artist, the book accompanying the exhibition unveils a luminous and unclassifiable work, which borrows as much from the Modernist principles, as from the vernacular traditions of her country and from pre-Columbian art. Through many photographs and texts from scholars, it retraces the evolution of Amaral’s practice over time and the major role she played in the revolution of Fiber Art.

Born in 1932 in Bogotá, where she still lives, Olga de Amaral studied textile art at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (USA) after studying architecture in Bogotá in the early 1950s. On her return to Colombia in 1955, she decided to pursue this art form, bringing together her training in the modernist principles of the Bauhaus with her cultural heritage and traditional Colombian weaving techniques. Her hand-woven works combine natural fibers, paint, plaster, and precious metals, and reflect her interest in architecture and geometry. A contemporary of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks, Olga de Amaral participated in the revolution of Fiber Art in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the first Latin American artist to take part in the Lausanne Tapestry Biennial in 1967. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and was named “Visionary Artist” by the New York Museum of Art and Design in 2005. Her works are included in the collections of numerous museums around the world.