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Olga de Amaral has seized the textile medium with grace and talent and has used materials as different as horsehair, gesso or linen, gold leaf and palladium.
Like Arachne, she weaves, knots, braids, intertwines the threads in sumptuous three-dimensional works that unite the earth to the sky. She was able to draw on the vernacular traditions of her country as well as on pre-Columbian art to revo- lutionize textile art and give it a modernity beyond time and space. It was in the 1970s that her ceramicist friend Lucie Rie introduced her to the Japanese tech- nique of kintsugi, which consists of repairing an object by highlighting its fault lines with gold powder.
This metal quickly became one of her favorite materials, allowing her to transform textiles into an iridescent surface that diffracts and reflects light.
Too often textile art has been relegated to the background as a simple decorative art abandoned to women, but Olga de Amaral’s creations are bold and unconven- tional, resolutely linked to post-World War II abstract art.
This exceptional retrospective shows in particular her essential contribution to the artistic avant-garde of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Two large series allow her to deploy her spontaneous and expansive style inspired by the history and landscapes of her native land by their tones and shapes evoking the high plateaus of the Andes mountain range, the valleys and the vast tropical plains, the Estelas (stars) and the Brumas (Mist).