Olga de Amaral. The Mantle of Memory.

Represented in numerous museums in Europe, North America, and South America, as well as in prominent private and corporate collections, Olga de Amaral has successfully synthesized countless craft traditions focused on techniques and materials with the great principles of fine art, such as formalism, abstraction, and the metaphysical quest. Her mastery of conventional techniques has allowed her to gradually push back the boundaries of our understanding of textiles as objects located in space, and to occupy a prominent place on the contemporary art scene. Gradually, in fact, de Amaral has succeeded in moving textile work beyond the category of woven tapestries defined by flat surfaces, adherence to the wall, its pictorial motifs, and the importance given to the organic and physical properties of materials, and in developing a conceptual practice that borrows its strategies from painting, sculpture, and architecture. Olga de Amaral uses a wide variety of materials—gold and silver leaf, and brightly colored pigments that evoke Colombia's landscapes and cultural history—which she manually incorporates into the structure of her works through meticulous application that sometimes takes months. The resulting objects are imposing in size, yet they convey an impression of both intimacy and monumentality that is not necessarily a function of their size. This publication is published on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the artist by the Louise Blouin Foundation, in collaboration with the Agnès Monplaisir gallery. The exhibition presents a selection of works from the last fifteen years and brilliantly highlights the artist's unique career.