There are many reasons why the glass architecture imagined by Jean Nouvel for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris is celebrated, one being its seamless integration with the ever-changing colours of the surrounding garden. With the launch of a retrospective celebrating Olga de Amaral, this connection is brought into sharp focus. The monumental textile works of the Colombian artist (b. 1932, Bogotá), a leading figure in fibre art, burst with vibrant tones of orange, brown and green, reflecting the hues of autumn. In this stunning setting, her pieces create a dynamic link between art and nature while highlighting the creative potential of textile art, an understudied medium partly due to its strong association with (and prejudice against) female artists.

De Amaral has long been acclaimed by critics for the unclassifiable nature of her art, even though the majority of her works rarely travelled beyond her native Colombia. This exhibition signifies a long-awaited recognition, bringing her work to the European stage. Featuring over 80 works, the retrospective offers a comprehensive view of a career that began in the 1950s, and has continuously evolved through relentless experimentation.

As I build surfaces, I create spaces of meditation, contemplation and reflection. Every small unit that forms the surface is not only significant in itself but is also deeply resonant of the whole. – Olga de Amaral

Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, de Amaral was sent to the United States during the years of La Violencia, Colombia’s civil conflict between liberals and conservatives (1948-1958). After earning a degree in architecture, her arrival in 1954 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art - where leading figures like Anni Albers were teaching - immersed de Amaral in an artistic culture dominated by abstraction. The Bauhaus philosophy underpinning the college’s practices encouraged her to develop a unique voice, which was further shaped upon her return to Colombia in 1955. There, the richness of pre-Columbian art and vernacular craft traditions offered a fertile ground for reinterpretation through the modernist lens she had embraced in the United States. Initially working as a textile designer alongside her husband Jim Amaral in their decorative textiles company, Telas Amaral, she gradually abandoned commercial utility for purely artistic expression.

By the 1960s, de Amaral's fusion of decorative influences and abstract experimentation aligned with a revolutionary shift occurring in textile art, particularly across Europe. This seismic change challenged the long-established conventions of tapestry-making. The 1965 "Querelle de Lausanne", a controversy among textile creators that emerged during the Tapestry Biennale de Lausanne, vividly illustrates this tension, as the debate over the need to maintain the rigid 12 cm motif standard in tapestry underscored a broader conflict between traditionalists, like the cartonniers and those advocating for greater freedom in interpretation and the exploration of sculptural potential. The Venice Biennale in 1969 explored this distinction, juxtaposing historic textile manufacturers with contemporary artists like Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose Abakans rejected convention. Influenced by these international exchanges, de Amaral joined the flow of this experimental freedom, which helped her gain increased international visibility. In 1967, she was invited to the biennale in Lausanne, becoming the first South American artist to participate. Two years later, in 1969, she took part in Wall Hangings, an exhibition devoted to textile art at the MoMA in New York.

Rejecting a chronological layout, the retrospective invites visitors to explore de Amaral’s oeuvre through a careful selection of emblematic works, thoughtfully displayed in the different areas of the Fondation Cartier to amplify the resonance with the surroundings. The monumental Muro en rojos (1982) evokes the changing leaves of a forest with its fabric tiles, while the Brumas (Mists) series (2013) recalls the mist of Colombian landscapes with a three-dimensionality reminiscent of kinetic art. At times, the mimicry is deliberate, at least in its intent: Strata XV (2009) evokes the summit of a mountain, while Cenit 2 (2019) reflects the coexistence of natural and industrial landscapes. Each of these references seems to recall the presence of an 'elsewhere', weaving a continuous dialogue between detail and unity. As de Amaral herself observed: 'As I build surfaces, I create spaces of meditation, contemplation and reflection. Every small unit that forms the surface is not only significant in itself but is also deeply resonant with the whole. Likewise, the whole is deeply resonant of each individual element.”

De Amaral’s practice, unbound by taboos of their historical moment, embraces a wide range of materials and techniques. In Estelas (1996), the use of gold leaf pays homage to pre-Columbian funerary art, transforming her works into shimmering tributes to ancient stone reliefs. Her use of knots, such as those of the Nudo artworks, reflects a rediscovery of the quipus—a complex system of knotted strings used by the Incas for accounting and storytelling—underscoring the linguistic nature of textile art. Each thread, beyond its abstract context, becomes a vehicle for narration, reflecting de Amaral’s vision of the shared origins of text and textile – both rooted in the Latin word ‘texere’, which means to weave and to tell.

Lina Ghotmeh’s sensitive exhibition design envelops the artworks, creating an inner landscape within the museum space. By eschewing segmented pathways, the design encourages intimate engagement, challenging traditional front-facing displays and allowing visitors to observe the works from multiple perspectives. This philosophy aligns with de Amaral’s belief that the reverse side of her pieces serves as a space for formal freedom, offering new angles of interpretation. By encouraging this multiplicity of viewpoints, Ghotmeh’s design instinctively aligns with the Fondation Cartier’s broader cultural mission: pluralistic, inclusive, decentralised and ecological, aiming to reintroduce overlooked legacies - including those of women artists - into contemporary discourse.