Olga de Amaral

(Colombian, born 1932)

Olga de Amaral is a Colombian textile artist known for her site-specific installations utilizing materials such as gold leaf, fiber glass, and paint along with traditional fibers to create three-dimensional installations. These works are either hung flat upon the wall like a painting, or suspended from the ceiling like clouds with transparent architectural supports. Amaral’s inspiration comes from a variety of sources, including her native landscape, pre-Colombian textiles and baskets, gold Catholic Church relics, and geometric abstraction. Born in 1932 in Bogotá, Columbia, she went on to study architecture at the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca, then fiber arts at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, graduating in 1955. Amaral was honored with the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and has exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. The artist lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.