Olga de Amaral accompanies the first major European retrospective of the visionary Colombian artist, whose woven works merge fiber, light, and landscape into a language of their own. Published in conjunction with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition (October 2024 – March 2025), the book traces Amaral’s six-decade career through more than 250 photographs and essays by leading scholars and curators. Her luminous, unclassifiable art draws equally from modernist abstraction, pre-Columbian craft, and the textures of the natural world.
We first encountered Amaral’s work in Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and again in Woven Histories at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.—but nothing prepared us for the Paris retrospective. The scale and sensuality of her gold-drenched textiles were breathtaking, each piece alive with layered histories and the quiet rhythm of handwoven time. Later, watching the film The House of Imagination (linked here), we were struck by the dedication labor behind her monumental weavings—the alchemy of fiber, metal, and devotion.
This volume captures something of that radiance: a tactile record of an artist whose practice transforms matter into metaphor.
About the Authors
The catalog includes texts by Ann Coxon, textile art specialist and curator at Tate Modern; Lina Ghotmeh, French-Lebanese architect and designer of the exhibition; Marie Perennès, curator and Latin American art historian; and María Wills Londoño, Colombian researcher and curator known for her work on contemporary image and cultural narratives.
Details
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
Softcover, 22 × 29 cm , 300 pages
250 color and black-and-white reproductions
English edition, 2024
Olga de Amaral accompanies the first major European retrospective of the visionary Colombian artist, whose woven works merge fiber, light, and landscape into a language of their own. Published in conjunction with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition (October 2024 – March 2025), the book traces Amaral’s six-decade career through more than 250 photographs and essays by leading scholars and curators. Her luminous, unclassifiable art draws equally from modernist abstraction, pre-Columbian craft, and the textures of the natural world.
We first encountered Amaral’s work in Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and again in Woven Histories at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.—but nothing prepared us for the Paris retrospective. The scale and sensuality of her gold-drenched textiles were breathtaking, each piece alive with layered histories and the quiet rhythm of handwoven time. Later, watching the film The House of Imagination (linked here), we were struck by the dedication labor behind her monumental weavings—the alchemy of fiber, metal, and devotion.
This volume captures something of that radiance: a tactile record of an artist whose practice transforms matter into metaphor.
About the Authors
The catalog includes texts by Ann Coxon, textile art specialist and curator at Tate Modern; Lina Ghotmeh, French-Lebanese architect and designer of the exhibition; Marie Perennès, curator and Latin American art historian; and María Wills Londoño, Colombian researcher and curator known for her work on contemporary image and cultural narratives.
Details
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
Softcover, 22 × 29 cm , 300 pages
250 color and black-and-white reproductions
English edition, 2024
