Bellas Artes has exhibited the masterful tapestries and fiber sculptures of Columbian artist Olga de Amaral for twenty five years. The Kornsteins first met the artist in Bogota in 1971. When renowned textile designer, curator, and collector Jack Lenor Larson included de Amaral’s work in an exhibition he curated for Bellas Artes in 1986, the gallery began to represent her work.
The artist is known for her architectural and sculptural constructions that “turn textiles into golden surfaces of light.” By using linen and cotton coated with gesso, colored pigments and gold and silver leaf, she weaves and twists fibers, creating an ethereal luminosity that produces imaginary landscapes inspired by Columbian native architecture, pre-Columbian textiles, Indian basketry, gold artifacts, ornamentation of colonial Catholic Churches, and abstract geometries. For this exhibition, de Amaral will be showing two different bodies of work. VII Pueblos will portray the villages and small towns of Columbia that lie nestled in the mountains. Woven orthogonal grids of gold will suggest the settlements, while the softly glowing curvilinear patterns surrounding them will represent the mountains and the contours of the natural world. These aerial topographies become maps of our imaginations, symbolic of the unique dreams and landscapes that live deep inside us, bringing forth multiple moods and narratives.
Other works on view, VII Policromos, will address how colors also dwell in the imagination and bring forth potent images. For many years the artist primarily applied color to subtly accent the radiance brought forth by her use of the silver and gold leaf. Now color will become the principal focus of the work, creating powerful relationships and choreographies that will paint and illuminate the space of the gallery in new ways. These, like the Pueblos, will evoke emotional landscapes that awaken our cellular memories.
de Amaral’s work is in the collections of museums throughout the world. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, de Young Museum in San Francisco, Art Museum of the Americas and National Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, in Washington, DC, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, Denver Art Museum. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota, National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Musée Bellerive in Zurich, and Museo del Instituto de Arte Contemporaneo,Lima.
The artist was selected as the 2005 Artist Visionary! by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Notable installations by the artist include three large 10’H x 8’ W tapestries hanging on a marble wall in the atrium of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong and Field of Stelae acquired by BGC International for the atrium of its London Headquarters. Field of Stelae is composed of 22 suspended sculptures. Reminiscent of ancient standing stones, the abstract vertical shapes illuminate the surroundings with their gold and silver surfaces.
Recently she was the only contemporary artist included in Plus Ultra: Otre Il Barocco Arte Latino-Americano, an exhibition of Spanish colonial paintings from Mexico, Peru, and Columbia, at the Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, Italy from December 2009 - June 2010.
July 31 - August 29, 2009
Bellas Artes has represented Colombian artist Olga de Amaral since 1986. de Amaral’s lush tapestries constructed of linen and cotton elements, drenched in gold and silver leaf, have established her as a truly original and gifted artist.
Her exhibition at the gallery this summer will feature three dimensional works, Nudos (knots). The knots represent an expressive new pathway in the artist’s oeuvre. Nudos expands the luminous and shaded nuances of de Amaral’s architectural tapestries and extends her intention of “turning textiles into golden surfaces of light.” The “golden surfaces of light” come full circle in the nudos by creating a tactile and sensual poetry that sculpts form and radiance in three dimensions. Each knot is made of 5,000 threads, 10 yards long, weighing two pounds. After layers of gesso and golden paint have been applied to each strand, the resulting form weighs fifty five pounds–an unexpected transformation.
The threads are weighted and grounded by the gesso, bonding them to the material realm and the substance of the earth. Yet the golden surfaces bring forth luminance, lifting the forms to an ethereal realm. This presents a paradox–an invented reality that fuses the material and the spiritual. The spatial environment that is brought forth immerses us simultaneously in a glow of tangible beauty and a sphere of meditative inner calm and peace that personifies de Amaral’s words, “shining odes to humanness and infinity.”
de Amaral’s work is in the collections of museums throughout the world. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, de Young Museum in San Francisco, Art Museum of the Americas and National Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, in Washington, DC, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, Denver Art Museum. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota, National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Musée Bellerive in Zurich, and Museo del Instituto de Arte Contemporaneo, Lima.
The artist was selected as the 2005 Artist Visionary! by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Notable installations by the artist include three large 10’H x 8’ W tapestries hanging on a marble wall in the atrium of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong and Field of Stelae acquired by BGC International for the atrium of its London Headquarters. Field of Stelae is composed of 22 suspended sculptures. Reminiscent of ancient standing stones, the abstract vertical shapes illuminate the surroundings with their gold and silver surfaces.
GLYPHSJuly 30 - August 30, 2003
Bellas Artes, which has represented the Colombian artist, Olga de Amaral, since 1986, is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work including the works which were shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art during her lecture in April.
The Bellas Artes exhibition will feature her shimmering gold or silver leafed, constructed and painted wall hangings as well as her new Glyph series in which she incorporates earth toned clay for the first time. De Amaral's inspiration has always come from the landscape, architecture and native inhabitants of Colombia; from the rivers, mountains, ancient monolithic stones, pre-Columbian gold, traditional weaving and especially the Spanish colonial churches. In the Glyph series, she uses a clay surface inspired by the adobe walls of her country.
De Amaral has created a unique art form which challenges narrow critical categorization combining elements of fiber art, painting and sculpture. In the prologue of "Olga de Amaral: The Mantle of Memory" Edward Lucie-Smith stated:
Olga de Amaral is unique among contemporary Latin American artists. At the heart of this uniqueness lies the fact that her work is essentially unclassifiable.
Her surfaces have a unique shimmer, a unique variability. They seem like a pure manifestation of the light which, as pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas knew, rules all human lives.
In the past 10 years, major exhibitions of de Amaral's work have been held in museums in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Japan, Germany, France and the United States. Her work is in numerous museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Musee d' Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.