Olga de Amaral, born in 1932 in Colombia, is considered one of the most important fibre sculptors to emerge in the late 1960s. A pioneer of the medium, her work is held in the collections of most major museums, and she has 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 in 2025. This was followed by her solo exhibition Olga de Amaral: Textile Body at MALBA (Latin American Museum of Buenos Aires), Argentina.
Her work is now the subject of a major survey exhibition, Olga de Amaral: Weaving the Infinite, on view at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, from September 10, 2026, to January 31, 2027.

Since the 1960s, Olga de Amaral has consistently pushed the boundaries of textile art through experimentation with a variety of materials, including linen, cotton, horsehair, gesso, gold leaf, and palladium. Employing diverse techniques such as weaving, knotting, braiding, and interlacing threads, she creates monumental, three-dimensional works. Her practice is deeply rooted in her exploration of Colombian culture and personal identity, establishing her as 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, Byzantine mosaics, and spiritual practices. Through these works, textiles are transformed into portals leading not only to hallowed sites but also to transcendent states of spiritual experience. Initially engaging the viewer through sight, the works gradually reach beyond the visual, inviting a deeper connection in which acts of looking become acts of feeling and aesthetic devotion.

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