Olga de Amaral (born 1932 in Bogotá, Colombia) is a pioneering fiber artist best known for her large-scale, abstract, fiber-based works, which evoke her local heritage through weaving techniques that are in dialogue with contemporary makers from across the globe. Amaral was one of the few South American fiber artists to receive international acclaim for her work in the 1960s and ’70s, due in great part to her reconciliation of local traditions with global developments in the art world. Amaral is among the first artists to incorporate spiral-wrapping and plaiting techniques in fiber art. She has explored these innovations across numerous, distinctive bodies of work. Bruma W is a continuation of Amaral’s groundbreaking textiles. Groupings of these works have been the centerpieces of recent major retrospectives at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, and the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI. 

Bruma W is an exemplary piece from Amaral’s most recent body of work, the Brumas series, which she began in 2013. The Brumas series revisits many of the artist’s early experiments with materiality, scale, and space, demonstrating her formal inventiveness and signature gestures. Here, diaphanous black linen threads cascade from a wooden panel overhead, creating an optical effect that recalls the work’s title, Bruma, the Spanish word for mist. Amaral’s delicate, acrylic- and gesso-painted threads form a geometric shape that, depending on the angle from which the piece is viewed, fluctuates between a triangle or a diagonal swath of color. Where many of Amaral’s earlier works emphasize their strong, physical presence, Bruma W is a light, dynamic installation that invites viewers to circulate around and look through its thousands of component threads.