5 This coincided with a renewal of avant-garde activity in other parts of Latin America - for example the foundation of two avant-garde groups, Madi and Concreto-Invencion in Buenos Aires in 1945. These groupings were not simply a continuation of the original European Construc- tivist impulse (which was beginning to lose momentum in its original habitat). They pointed towards something new. Essentially the roots of the Conceptual Art which was the blossom in New York in the mid 1960s and which was to be dominant worldwide during the following decade, are to be found in Latin American initiatives of the mid 1940s. If one looks at the work of the major Latin American abstractionists of the post war period, and these of course include the sculptors Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar working in Colombia itself, what one sees is an effort to integrate the desired form and the chosen material, so that these become inseparable. One also sees an increasing rejection of conventional formats and a search for structural logic. In some cases, as for example with the kinetic artists Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesus Rafael Soto this search for logic led to an actual dissolution of form. In others, as with the gifted Brazilian Lygia Clark, it led to a complete abandonment of existing artistic conventions. Placed within this context of experiment, Olga de Amaral's work acquires a new resonance. One sees, for example, that her characteristic techniques involve the full integration of structure and surface which other artists in the region were trying to achieve in a perhaps less fluent way. Her tapestries become the precursors of the nu- merous 'off-stretcher' works which figured in Latin American biennials during the 1980s and 1990s. There is, however, another element as well. At first sight it seems to contradict much of what I have said above. Olga's most typical works breathe an undoubted feeling of luxury. They are alluring in a purely sensual way. This is not a quality which is popular with the supporters of a rigorously intellectual art. Yet the undoubted sumptuousness of her gold pieces in particular is often linked to an extraordinary feeling of otherworldliness. In one sense it is because they seem to have descended to us from some unknown ancient civilization. They invite us to create poetic fictions in our own minds about what such a civilization would be like. It would be interesting, one day, to see Olga's work sharing an exhibition with major Inca feather pieces from Peru. What was authentically 'pre-historic' would, I suspect, seem less romantically ancient than these productions of our own time. Yet there is another, more directly practical reason for the feeling of otherworldliness I have mentioned and this is the actual quality of her surfaces. Among the predeces- sors for her golden tapestries one might number the 'Monogolds' of the French artist Yves Klein, produced in the early 1960s. These, in turn, depend from Japanese sliding screens which Klein saw in Japan, when he was training at a karate school there. It is noticeable that, in order to give the 'Monogolds' character Klein felt compelled to dent their surfaces. The Italian artist Lucio Fontana, who sometimes favours monochrome metallic surfaces, felt compelled to attack these even more savagely. With Olga's work none of this is necessary. Her surfaces have a unique shimmer, a unique variability. They seem like a pure manifestation of the light which, as the Pre-Columbian popula- tions of the Americas knew, rules all human lives.