The wind quivers under the horsehair, the earth glows under the wool, the gold and the leaves fall softly, everything hangs by a thread. Weaving, Olga de Amaral has made it much more than a profession. From her weaver’s fingers are born twilights, autumns, quarries dug with veins of gold and coal mines, landscapes of the Moon or distant stars. Each tapestry, a world. These worlds, the Cartier Foundation lets itself be invaded all winter, until March 16, 2025, to the great pleasure of the public who come in crowds to discover the Art of this unknown.
In Colombia, her native country that she never left, Olga de Amaral is a celebrity in textile art, in short, art. In France, no one knew her before this retrospective-revelation, apart from a few curious people who had spotted her in the exhibition. Decorum from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, in 2013.
Rich in 80 works, most of which had never crossed the Atlantic, the exhibition honors a 92-year-old creator who has nothing to envy of the American Sheila Hicks. Well known in France, the latter has also drawn all the possible threads of creation. Like her, the Colombian artist has often been nourished by the art of pre-Columbian weavings, which belong to her history. Of the qipu of Andean tradition (these knotted ropes which were used to “write” counts or genealogies), she learned an essential lesson: “Threads are like words to me”she summarizes.
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