Last night I attended a blockbuster exhibit of the textile guilt dreams of Colombian born artist Olga de Amaral at Latin American Masters Gallery in Bergamont Station, Santa Monica. At 80, she is working in a master emotional space few people ever evolve to.
The gallery was alive with almost 20 exquisite, woven 3-dimensional textile works using a canvas of silk, cotton, horsehair or linen, then painted with gesso and earth toned pigments, gold and silver leaf, knotted into works that are essentially unclassifiable. The artist overlaps, weaves and twists strands of fibers that transform the visual space into glittering, mirages that dance before the eye, and follow the viewer around the room.
This ethereal luminosity produces imaginary landscapes inspired by Columbian native architecture, pre-Columbian textiles, Indian basketry, gold artifiacts, ornamentation of colonial Catholic Churches, and abstract geometries. Olga is a an important figure in the development of post-war Latin American abstraction.
Olga de Amaral has exhibited word-wide, including: Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France and the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan. Her work is included in the permanent collection of major institutions, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York and The Renwick Gallery of the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.
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