page_title: Olga de Amaral
section_title: The Estelas
hierarchical_section_title: Olga de Amaral / Fiber as canvas. The 1990s / The Estelas
caption_attribution_description: English: Estela 19 - back, 1996; 180 x 80 cm; linen, gesso, silver and gold leaf.
context_page_description: Olga de Amaral is a Colombian visual artist known for her large-scale abstract works made with fibers and covered in gold and/or silver leaf. Because of her ability to reconcile local concerns with international developments, de Amaral became one of the few artists from South America to become internationally known for her work in fiber during the 1960s and ‘70s. She is also considered an important practitioner in the development of postwar Latin American Abstraction. She currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.
context_section_description: In the series of the Estelas started in 1996, just like with the Umbras, the inside and outside again came to the artist's consideration. The title refers to the Spanish word estrella that stands for star and "es tela" that stands for "is [made of] fabric". Olga de Amaral has always considered the back of her pieces as a side to experiment, but in this series she decided to work on both sides as equal. The front of the Stelae is luminous gold and the back dark silver, still maintaining the vestiges of the original experimental function of this side. "I think of them as stones full of space, each one a presence full of secrets. Many together, like mounds of stones or rocks, point to an answer, an unknown order, a hidden history". These pieces gained a three-dimensional character as they are always exhibited suspended from the ceiling at different elevations and angles and in a group, with each side (golden or silver) facing in one direction. The effect of these pieces is contradictory - being both solid surfaces, bringing the solidity of the ruins of past civilisations, and at the same time floating and immutable. The Stelae were shown at Galería Diners in Bogotá and in museums in the United States and Europe in 1999.
caption: Back of Estela, 1996; linen, gesso, silver and gold leaf.
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