“We are going to send the tapestry to the Santa Fe Foundation,” Diego Amaral tells me, “I don’t know how big it is.” His head is abuzz because his mother, the immense Olga de Amaralturns 92 years old (he was born on June 14, 1932) and Cartier Foundation –one of the most sophisticated places of contemporary art– opens its individual exhibition on October 12 in Paris. “The tapestry,” he tells me later, “is divided into six modules and measures 7 x 8 meters.” And everyone who has passed through Santa Fe has enjoyed it in a waiting room.
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Olga de Amaral was honored by the Metropolitan in New York and this year she will have a solo exhibition at the Cartier Foundation.
Photo:Fernando Gomez
The Cartier Foundation, on its official website, celebrates that it will be Olga de Amaral’s most ambitious exhibition to date in Europe. It will have approximately between 80 and 90 pieces for 1,500 square meters in one of the most spectacular buildings – with its emblematic glass facades – in Montparnasse.
However, the work of Olga de Amaral It is not as well known as that of Fernando Botero and his name is not even as loud or as popular as that of other giants of Colombian art. She was always a Rare avis in the middle; but his work – without needing to make much noise – seems to be everywhere. The woven flag of the Nariño Palace – since times of Belisario Betancur– has accompanied all the presidents.
In 2021, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, paid tribute to him with the most ambitious retrospective to date. The Metropolitan Museum in New York included it in its ambitious exhibition Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art with three pieces, he also paid tribute to him in 2021 and for several years It is on display in MoMA’s permanent collection.
Olga’s work is enriched by the splendor of the Colony and pre-Columbian fabrics.
Photo:Fernando Gomez
The market is not indifferent to his work either: In May of this year, the Sotheby’s auction house sold one of his pieces for $698,500. and in 2022 Christie’s one for US$ 428,000. Their auction prices do not go below $100,000. Only Fernando Botero and Maria Berrio –among the group of Colombian artists– he is above her. In a top 5 they share the podium Oscar Murillo and Doris Salcedo.
The Duque Arango Gallery in Medellín (Race 37 no. 10-34) –in a happy coincidence with his birthday– he recently inaugurated an ambitious exhibition in which they compiled a dozen of their own works, and in collaboration with several local collectors, they achieved a powerful exhibition that in a couple of months will also be in Bogotá in Casa MaS. And it really is dazzling.
Olga de Amaral’s work is based on textiles and fabrics, but in the midst of her searches, she struck gold. And seeing her immense golden fabrics is an overwhelming experience. Olga mixes indigenous weaving traditions with colonial gold; There is something spiritual and deep in each of his pieces that is beyond religion.. One of the most revealing exhibitions I have ever seen was many years ago in the La Tertulia de Cali Museum In the alternate room: there were 7 or 9 gold rugs, with the room in darkness, which simply took your breath away.
His work does not resist words too much. It is a work to contemplate and – as critic Twylene Moyer says in the book dedicated to her work – “To truly understand their work we need to go beyond the written or spoken word.accepting that some visual ideas cannot be completely reproduced through language.”
Olga de Amaral has been married for more than half a century to another great artist: Jim Amaral.
Photo:Fernando Gomez
Because his work generates amazement, each piece requires years of meticulous work, they are pieces of exaggerated delicacy and with a shocking visual effect, it is impossible not to remain in total stillness before each work. In Duque Arango there is a piece that could be a river or the body of a snake in the forest; There are several golden suns or chromatic games like the Blue Rift. “It is not strange, therefore, that the term ‘sublime’ has been frequently used in relation to his works,” wrote Eduardo Serrano in a text for EL TIEMPO, “and even more so if one considers that despite his silence and serenity , His works aim to stir and move the spirit”.
Olga, for her part, has always been allergic to social life; She has never cared about her place in the world of the arts, in an interview with BOCAS Magazine, five years ago, she threw out a phrase that sums her up: “I think they still feel that what I do doesn’t matter, they see me as a knitter.. So I have been very free to work because I don’t have any kind of pressure and because what has motivated me to continue is the love for what I do.”
Olga has been married all her life to Jim Amaral, a great American artist she met when they were young in the United States – Olga studied weaving at Cranbrook in 1954 – and they only separated when he had to serve in the military in the Philippines. Jim, last year, had one of the most visited exhibitions in Bogotá, organized by the Mamboin the Atrium Tower.
And surely they already have everything ready to celebrate in Paris.
FERNANDO GÓMEZ ECHEVERRI
DIRECTOR OF BOCAS Y LECTURAS MAGAZINE
