OLGA DE AMARAL (b. 1932)
Memento 7201068 x 32 3/4 in.(169.86 x 80.01 cm) linen, gesso, acrylic, and gold leaf
Provenance
Donated by the artist via Lisson Gallery to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Latin American Experience Benefit Auction, 2022Private Collection, acquired from the above sale
Heather James Fine Art
Literature
Houston, Texas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Latin American Experience Benefit Auction 2022 Catalogue, 2022, illustrated on coverOlga de Amaral’s Memento 7 exemplifies the Colombian artist’s mastery in transforming textile into a medium of profound sculptural and symbolic resonance. Woven from natural fibers and coated with gesso, metallic leaf, and pigments, the work shimmers between material solidity and optical flux. Its surface glints with gold, refracting light in rhythmic intervals that shift as the viewer moves, evoking both the permanence of memory and its fragility.
The Memento series, from which this piece belongs, explores memory as a layered, luminous presence. By embedding gold leaf within the weave, de Amaral connects her practice to pre-Columbian traditions in which gold was not a mere material but a carrier of spiritual and cultural meaning. In Memento 7, geometric patterning and a richly textured surface create a sense of sacred tapestry, collapsing distinctions between painting, sculpture, and textile.
De Amaral’s work has been celebrated internationally for expanding the language of fiber art into realms of architecture and abstraction. Memento 7 resonates with major institutional holdings of her work, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. Within these collections, her gilded weavings stand as both objects of rare material beauty and meditations on history, place, and the metaphysics of light.
Memento 7 thus embodies the artist’s unique synthesis of ancestral craft and modern abstraction, offering a powerful reflection on memory, time, and transformation.
The Memento series, from which this piece belongs, explores memory as a layered, luminous presence. By embedding gold leaf within the weave, de Amaral connects her practice to pre-Columbian traditions in which gold was not a mere material but a carrier of spiritual and cultural meaning. In Memento 7, geometric patterning and a richly textured surface create a sense of sacred tapestry, collapsing distinctions between painting, sculpture, and textile.
De Amaral’s work has been celebrated internationally for expanding the language of fiber art into realms of architecture and abstraction. Memento 7 resonates with major institutional holdings of her work, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. Within these collections, her gilded weavings stand as both objects of rare material beauty and meditations on history, place, and the metaphysics of light.
Memento 7 thus embodies the artist’s unique synthesis of ancestral craft and modern abstraction, offering a powerful reflection on memory, time, and transformation.