Fig. 48. Fig. 49. Olga de Amaral. Wall Hanging 1 (Muro tejido 1), ca. 1969. Olga de Amaral. Woven Gridded Wall #66 (Muro tejido cuadriculado #66), Wool, 87 × 43 in. (221 × 109.2 cm). Museum of Arts and Design, 1970. Wool, horsehair, 119 × 70 × 20 in. (302.3 × 177.8 × 50.8 cm). Museum of New York, gift of the Dreyfus Foundation, through the American Arts and Design, New York, gift of the Dreyfus Foundation, through the Craft Council, 1989 (1989.1.2) American Craft Council, 1989 (1989.1.3) made her Alchemies (Alquimias) series “in homage to a Andean techniques and theorizing on the unparalleled pre-Columbian gold mantle I had the fortune of seeing potential of textiles to contribute to the modernization in Peru’s Gold Museum.” The artist visited Peru in 1969 of society, both by embracing industry and by providing and was overwhelmed by “the ancestral intelligence—the its antidote through the enhancement of textiles’ tac- unconscious high mathematics—present in everything tile qualities.50 Albers’s practice, teaching, and writings textile in ancient Andean culture. It was an awareness that acted together as a textile manifesto, catapulting her 47 seemed almost genetic,” she said. radical vision to the 昀椀ber artists of the 1960s and 1970s. “Going back to beginnings,” Anni Albers wrote in On Learning from her emphasis on the structural aspects Weaving, “is seeing ourselves mirrored in others’ work, not of weaving as well as from its materiality, Sheila Hicks, in the result but in the process.” This, to her, was learning: Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral started their careers 48 “looking forward from a point way back in time.” The with works that expanded the language of abstraction beginning, for this group of groundbreaking weavers and through the experimentation with the grid, transparency, 昀椀ber artists of the mid-twentieth century, involved tak- multiple structures, and three-dimensional and modular ing “a long glance backward” to the ancient tradition of work in their weavings. Their innovations set the stage for the textile medium.49 the ubiquity of the art of threads today and will continue Albers acted as a historical bridge between the past and the present, studying ancient to inspire artists of the future. Fig. 50. Olga de Amaral. Alchemy 13 (Alquimia 13), 1984. Linen, rice paper, gesso, indigo red and gold leaf, 72 × 62 in. (182.9 × 157.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Olga and Jim de Amaral, 1987 (1987.387) 44