Challenging the easel

Here, what constitutes the very substance of the canvas becomes the artwork by itself. Since the 1920s and the advent of the Bauhaus movement, it has been officially agreed upon that a work of art may be entirely made of fabric or even threads. Conceptually, this is an interesting principle given that the great struggle of 20^th-century artists involved challenging the reign of easel painting.  That’s the idea… In fact, the field has long remained a poor relation of painting.

Anni Albers

When the great artist of German origin, Anni Albers (1899-1994) enrolled in the Bauhaus weaving workshop in 1922, it was because as a woman she was given no other choice. But fortunately for art history, she would go on to develop a taste for it. This has been shown in several exhibitions around the world, at Moma, the Kunstmuseum in Basel as well as the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris. Olga de Amaral (born in 1932) is an artist whose work is in line with Anni Albers’ practice.

Obsession for beauty

This Colombian artist has always worked in her native country, with the exception of a short period of training in the United States between 1955 and 1956. She is the subject of an unprecedented retrospective featuring 80 works at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. As Marie Perennès, the curator, explains, “for a long time her main activity involved creating fabrics for furnishingsin parallel, she had a free and experimental way of working”. The first word that comes to mind when visiting the retrospective is “dazzling”. “I think my mother’s obsession is the constant search for beauty,” confirms her son Diego.

Diego de Amaral

In her mostly monumental works, Amaral works with an infinite number of textural and lighting effects. Specially for the exhibition, many pieces previously exhibited in public spaces in Colombia have been restored. Her repertoire is abstract, defined by a wide range of fabrication techniques (from weaving to the simple hanging thread) and the use of materials (from horsehair to gold leaf, inspired by Colombian culture).

Reminiscent of other artists

Aside from the technical prowess and extraordinary aesthetic, some works are reminiscent of other artists belonging to other continents. Her accumulations of colourful strips of fabric resemble the large later tapestries of Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté (born in 1953). Her juxtaposed metallic particles evoke the grandiose wall hangings of Ghanaian star El Anatsui (born in 1944), which are fashioned from bottle caps.

Sheila Hicks

Not to mention the skeins of coloured wool, very similar to those of the brilliant American artist based in France, Sheila Hicks (born in 1934) (See here an interview of Sheila Hicks).

The least original part of the exhibitionat Fondation Cartier is her Bruma from the 2010s, made up of threads suspended in polychrome variations, which seem to adopt the principle of the plastic Penetrables by Bolivian artist Jesus Rafael Soto (1923-2005), invented at the end of the 60s.

Never outside of Colombia has Amaral’s work been exhibited on such a scale.

This is the last exhibition to be held in the glass building designed by Jean Nouvel. During 2025, the Fondation Cartier will be moving into a new structure, also designed by Nouvel, just across from the Louvre, on the site of a former antiques shopping centre, Le Louvre des Antiquaires.

Through 16 mars 2025. www.fondationcartier.com/expositions/olga-de-amaral