Olga de Amaral (b. 1932) is considered one of the most important fibre sculptors to emerge in the late 1960s. A pioneer of the media, her work is in the collection of most major museums, and she has been exhibited extensively. In 2024, Amaral was included in the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and her first major retrospective in Europe opened at Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (travelling to the ICA Miami, 2025), followed by her solo exhibition Olga de Amaral: Textile Body, MALBA (Latin American Museum of Buenos Aires), Argentina. Her work is the subject of a major survey exhibition, Olga de Amaral: Weaving the Infinite Sep 10, 2026–Jan 31, 2027, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis, MO.

Since the 1960s, Olga de Amaral has consistently pushed the boundaries of textile art by experimenting with a variety of materials— linen, cotton, horsehair, gesso, gold leaf, and palladium—and employing diverse techniques like weaving, knotting, braiding, and interlacing threads to craft monumental, three dimensional works. Her work is deeply driven by her exploration of Colombian culture and her own identity and has become an important figure in the development of post-war Latin American abstraction.

In particular Amaral’s gold and silver tapestries evoke sacred spaces, referencing Colombian churches and Byzantine mosaics, and spiritual practices, transforming the tapestries into portals that lead not only to hallowed sites but also to transcendent states of spiritual experience. Initially engaged through sight, the works gradually reach beyond the visual, inviting a deeper connection where acts of looking become acts of feeling and aesthetic devotion.

Olga de Amaral was named “Visionary Artist” by New York’s Museum of Arts and Design in 2005. In 2021, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, dedicated a major exhibition to her entitled To Weave a Rock. A major retrospective of her work was later presented at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, France, which then traveled to the ICA Miami, where it concluded last October (2025).