Olga de Amaral’s fascinating works of gold and mist at the Fondation Cartier

Bogota. A curtain of rain reveals the city, orange ocher and green, with its raw brick architecture surrounded by lushly vegetated mountains. For a while, it looks like an Olga de Amaral tapestry, like the one that can be admired from October 12 at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. “We are the children of our landscape,” prophesied Lawrence Durrell. And Olga, a pioneer of the Colombian art scene and Fiber Art, has continued to weave the landscape alongside Sheila Hicks and Magdalena Abakanovitch. Its territory: Colombia.

Casa Amaral, a sprawling residence protected by barbed wire, is located in a posh part of the capital. It’s been four decades since Jim, his husband, and Olga bought it. He, 91, she, 92, sitting side by side in the dining room, occasionally holding each other’s hands as a last defense. Crazy elegant, he in a stylish suit, she in head-to-toe Issey Miyake. Two artists whose worlds do not intersect. Jim, a sculptor of the surrealist vein, with a universe worthy of Lautremont and his famous formula; Olga, a proponent of unclassifiable work at the intersection of Bauhaus modernist origins, folk traditions, and pre-Columbian art, which emerged from the new European tapestry movement born in the 1960s. so different A little wink, however, reveals their bond; Jim tied a red and black tie knitted by Olga, who wears a heavy necklace designed by Jim.

Feelings, memories, connections

Their children, Andrea and Diego, are there, caring, offering cakes. With old age, the memory weakens a little. Olga remembers beautiful things. his meeting with Jim, a magnificent Californian of Portuguese descent, at Michigan’s Cranbrook University, where he was introduced to textile art in the mid-1950s; the bazaars of his childhood, saturated with color, intoxicating aromas, where he was fascinated by the dexterity of peasant women weaving as they walked; his imaginary house, an abandoned place not far from his sister’s, a kind of matrix of his work with stone columns, exposed wooden floors, blue flower patterns on the walls, intricate roof tiles that look like little squares. his formal vocabulary, with which he creates ribbons, the raw material of his surfaces… And besides, he notes that text and textiles are not far away; and Olga’s stories, created from emotions, memories, connections, are told, like among the pre-Columbians, in the weaving. The artist has axioms: “The loom is the basis of everything” or “Everything happens by chance”.

He wove everything—linen, cotton, horse hair, etc.—and covered its fibers. gesso (Italian plaster), stucco, covered them with rice paper… Shells and textures painting suns, spirals, circles, spaces of meditation, contemplation, contemplation. A monumental, golden format is installed in the lounge of a very select club in El Nogal, Bogotá’s business district. Titled: Lunar storm and completed in 1995, the commission represents the mystical side of his art. On February 7, 2023, a FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) car bomb attack in front of this club, which is a symbol of power, caused many casualties and burned down the building. The fire destroyed part of El Nogal, but the work remained intact. Icon. Declassification, next pages, with Marie Perenes, art historian, specialist in Latin American arts, and exhibition curator.

Cesta Lunar 50B1991-2017

“Literally, ‘Basket of the Moon.’ A poetic, somewhat enigmatic title that no doubt refers to the culture of the Yanomami, a Moon-worshipping indigenous community in South America. Back Cesta LunarOlga combines palladium or silver with gold for the first time. The artist’s use of gold dates back to the 1970s kintsugi a Japanese technique for repairing ceramics using gold dust. Olga, who was living in Paris at the time, produced small formats that included gold leaf. Back in Bogotá, he would develop this work on a large scale. Gold refers both to this idea of ​​repair and to pre-colonial culture; There is a gold museum in Bogotá, not forgetting an airport called El Dorado. Cesta Lunar it is also a symbol of the transition from day to night, from the Sun to the Moon. Many of his works talk about the cycle of time. There is something very spiritual in his work. »

Brumas T, Q and R, 2014

“WHAT? Brumas (fogs) is a series that Olga started in 2013 and which she still continues. There is an idea of ​​fine rain following the fog. These works are made of hanging threads, one after the other, hand-dyed. They form geometric patterns that echo pre-Columbian architecture and textiles. We present about twenty of them in the exhibition. Hanging at different heights, they give the impression of a colorful cloud, which is reflected on the glass walls of the Fondation Cartier… Olga has worked a lot on the materiality of the textile, especially getting rid of its two-dimensionality. Sculptural, three-dimensional, his works occupy space, forcing the viewer to turn to understand them. When hung closely, it looks like a work in the style of Jesus-Rafael Soto. In this sense, they are related to Venezuelan kinetic art. Olga has relationships with art in the public space. »

layer XV, 2009

“It’s a very interesting work because it reveals Olga’s love of gold, reflections of light, and her taste for Colombian landscapes. He comes from Medellin, a city in the heart of the Andes, far from Colombia in the Caribbean. This region has a special biotope with its mountains, its valleys, its plants. When he later moved to Bogotá, he found the Andean city surrounded by mountains at over 2,500 meters. Olga’s work constantly alludes to Colombian landscapes, either in titles or figuratively, as here. The way she weaves the cotton threads creates lightness. A kind of topographic map where we recognize the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which rises to an altitude of almost 6000 meters. Layered means “layer”, a way to evoke the mountainous landscape of Colombia, but also all the geological layers. the opposite side of Layered woven entirely in red. This is Olga’s specialty. Pay attention to the opposite side, which can be blue, have patterns and suggest something else. He never sees the work as a two-dimensional tapestry. »

Estela 45, 2013

Polysemic, the title is a contraction of the words “star” and “stel”. This is a series that started in the mid-1990s, which is not closed, even if today Olga works on it much less than before. We present about fifteen of them in the exhibition. Here again Olga pushes the textile away. He uses gessoItalian plaster covering very strong woven layers. These are sculptural objects. Human-sized, somewhat anthropomorphic, these structures are reminiscent of the menhirs and votive sculptures of major pre-Columbian archaeological sites such as San Agustin. These works talk about death, life after death, they are very metaphysical. Here is a quote from Olga. “The stone hides the secret of the universe. Together or separately, the stones give an answer. With their impressive size and dignity, they are the links connecting the earth to the sky, the body to the soul. In the silence of the captive stone, there is an answer.” Everything is said! »

“Olga de Amaral” exhibition, from October 12 to March 16, 2025, at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. foundationcartier.com