Born in Bogatá, Columbia in 1932, Olga de Amaral is one of the leading artists of the post-war studio craft movement and an important figure in the development of twentieth-century Latin American abstraction. Her command of conventional techniques while progressively pushing the boundaries of orthodox understanding of how textiles work as objects in space brought her international acclaim. Alquimia Plata of 1990 is a so-called “woven wall” gilt in gold and oxidized silver; a construct of three bands of shimmering gold tiles set against an oxidized backdrop of systemically arranged rows of reticulated quadrilateral forms. The latter element would seem to reflect de Amaral’s interest in architectural features and the visual stimulation of the shingled houses and tiled roofs.  The Alquimia series, began in 1983, proved to be the impetus for utilizing gold leaf and is considered a defining moment in her career that led Tate Modern, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to ascertain it was her most important body of work and worthy of including in their collections.