The retrospective in Paris of the Colombian Olga de Amaral, born in 1932, will be a landmark. By the originality and beauty of his work, and thanks to the talent of the scenographer Lina Ghotmeh, particularly sensitive and intelligent. The exhibition begins on the ground floor of the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art contemporain, for which this is the last temporary exhibition in these places. To the right of the entrance, pieces of airy, transparent hanging wire seem to extend into the garden around the trees.
Mist Illusions
These are the Mists (Mist, 2013). In the light of day, they become translucent and reveal geometric figures, moving depending on the position of the viewer. It’s impossible not to think of the Optical Art of the 1970s as Jesús-Rafael Soto (1923-2005) or Julio le Parc (born in 1928) imagined it, obsessed with optical illusions. But the Venezuelan’s wire installations were penetrable, while the Argentinian’s moving blades were like square, metallic, reflective tapestries. If Op Art also wanted to be a “light trap”, the resemblance ends there. In the evening, these Mists become unreal, extending both to the ground and to the bay windows that Lina Ghotmeh covered with a reflective film, like a mirror. The immersion is magical.
View of Casa Amaral, Bogota, Colombia (View from Casa Amaral, Bogota, Colombia), Photo © Juan Daniel Caro ©Olga De Amaral.
Build the space
On the other side, to the left of the building, the atmosphere changes. We wander between walls which are in reality nothing more than monumental, colorful tapestries, massive as walls. We moved from the aerial to the earthly, from delicacy to gravity, from the ethereal to the organic. The scenographer has dotted the ground with slate rocks so that we feel the minerality of powerful Nature under our feet. Some tapestries seem to tumble from the top of their mountain, or to pour out streams of autumnal leaves.
L’installation Steles (2007) by Olga de Amaral, presented in the exhibition “Olga de Amaral” at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2024 © Marc Domage
The Great Wall (1976) et Farallon at sunset (Cliff at sunset, 1972) are monumental, sculptural, yet revealing the materiality of the varied fibers used and the know-how essential to their manufacture. We are thinking here of the work of Sheila Hicks (born in 1934), another pioneer of the Fiber Art movement, this group born in the United States placing textile works in the field of contemporary art. But Olga de Amaral’s works do not emphasize or extend the architecture on site of the place, they “make” the architecture. Dense, opaque, Woven Walls, huge screens, construct the space. It is easy to imagine the immense workshops that the artist needed all his life and the number assistants needed just to lift them!
View of Casa Amaral, Bogota, Colombia. From left to right in the foreground: Forest D2017, Town G2015, Tenth2015, Umbra 592014, Nebulas2014-2018, Two mobile columns1985, two halves 7, 2014 © Olga de Amaral. Photo © Juan Daniel Caro.
Twists and braids
Olga de Amaral has always worked with many weavers of indigenous origin, still capable of transmitting the infinite variety of artisanal methods dating back to the Pre-Columbians. She entangles the twists, intertwines them, folds and tucks braids into vines until their final unraveling. She reveals the mixture of various plant fibers that she uses (linen, cotton, rarely wool), but also rice paper, acrylic and gesso (stucco) for her works from the 1980s and, always, the horsehair.
Mists (2013-2024) by Olga de Amaral, presented in the exhibition “Olga de Amaral” at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2024 © Fondation Cartin pour l’art contemporain / Marc Domage
She wants us to be able to see and understand the assembly from the reverse side, as beautiful and sensual as the front side. Olga de Amaral draws inspiration from her childhood memories, from the “flesh” of this very complex country of which she works to create landscapes. Both those of the luxuriant tropical vegetation which surrounds Bogotá where she lived all her life, as well as plainsthese arid savannahs at the foot of the high Andean mountains, or the white adobes of the holiday villages and the gigantic stone walls of Machu Picchu. She transforms them into hymns to the material and a tribute to the weavers of her country, as well as to their Quechua ancestors.
3 Key Works
Olga De Amaral, Strata XV2009, linen, gesso, acrylic and gold leaf, 225 x 201 x 3 cm, courtesy Lisson Gallery.Olga De Amaral, Stela 45 (back), 2013, linen, gesso, acrylic, Japanese paper, gold and paladium leaf, 180 x 65 cm, courtesy Lisson Gallery.Mixing sacred and profane
Thanks to the English ceramist Lucie Rie (1902-1995) who, during a visit, pointed out how she used the Japanese technique of kintsugi to repair and fill the cracks with gold, she began to look differently at the gold on the altars in Spanish Jesuit churches, and rediscovered the gold of the Pre-Columbians. These masks and these Inca ornaments left a deep mark on her, making her turn to other sources of inspiration, by combining sacred and profane. We are now far from the young girl who barely graduated in architecture from the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca in Bogota in 1952.
Olga de Amaral at Casa Amaral, Bogota, Colombie, 2024 © Juan Daniel Caro
However, she was already planning ahead. She left her country to study, until 1955, at the prestigious Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. This school, directed by the Finnish Eliel Saarinen and equipped with a Weaving and Textile Design section, was essential to him. It allowed him to break his isolation from Latin America and gradually integrate international networks. Eero Saarinen, the son, had gathered around him those who became the great American designers of the post-war period, such as the couple Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Harry Bertoia, as well as the textile specialist Jack Lenor Larsen, who exhibited it in his New York gallery and included it in the “Wall Hanging” exhibition at MoMA in New York in 1969.
Mysterious golden steles
The wonders of the ground floor of the exhibition are only an appetizer to the miracle that awaits the public in the basement. We literally plunge into darkness. The surprise is total, unexpected and causes a shock. No more landmarks. The dazzle overwhelms you body and soul. We wander in sepulchral silence, in pure emotion, propelled into another dimension, brushing past around thirty ghostly pieces in which gold and silver dominate. Sorts of paintings whose luminosity is projected from the ceiling guide us between sky and earth, creating thresholds and corridors. A real labyrinth. We are then propelled among the Byzantines of Ravenna, we drown in a shimmer of green or blue mosaics which, when we approach them, resemble downy tesserae, bristling with knots like insect skins, or tightly woven in the shape of vernacular round baskets (Lunar road1991-2017).
In the background: Muro en rojos (1982) by Olga de Amaral, presented in the exhibition “Olga de Amaral” at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2024 © Connaissance des Arts / Guy Boyer
Everything is just quivers, vibrations, iridescent Amazonian feathers, frozen Antarctic mists, moving reliefs. We end up arriving in front of ghostly and majestic gold steles, engraved with unknown cuneiform writings (series of Steles and Alchemies). The presence, at once massive like a shell, light like a leaf and sensual like an ancient veil, takes your breath away. We find ourselves face to face with semblances of costumes, with lost souls from a submerged world who question you, with abstract icons.
Olga de Amaral, Alchemy 851995 © Olga de Amaral. Photo © Juan Daniel Caro, Courtesy Club El Nogal, Bogota, Colombia
