07/31/2025
Feature: Olga de Amaral Words: Annie Block
A Career In Color: Explore Olga De Amaral’s Retrospective In Miami
“For textile artist Olga de Amaral, “When I think about color, when I touch color, when I live color, I fly.” Fly she does. Now 93, she is the subject of a magnificent retrospective that kicked off last year in Paris at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, and has crossed the pond, landing at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami this spring. Born and living in Colombia, she goes on to say, “Color is a language common to all cultures.” And she’s experienced several of them, first earning an architectural design degree from the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca in Bogotá, then studying fiber art at Cranbrook in Michigan, before returning home to found and teach in the textile department at the University of Los Andes, along the way meeting fellow textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen, whose LongHouse Reserve has one of her pieces in its permanent collection.” By Annie Block.
As a designer I can truly appreciate the depth, discipline, and poetry behind her work I had the unforgettable opportunity to experience her breathtaking retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris last winter. Her work transcends surface, it radiates. The textures, layers, and pigments are not just visual; they evoke emotion, memory, and movement.
Her textiles are not just visual compositions, they are immersive experiences. They hold silence, light, and history.
She reminds us that design is not only about space or form, it is about emotion, identity, and transformation. Her use of color becomes a universal language. As she says: “When I live color, I fly.”
🇨🇴 Proud to see a fellow Colombian woman transform the global conversation around fiber, form, and feeling.
🔗 Exhibit Link.
