6 FOREWORDS In 1954 Olga Ceballos Vélez (now Olga de Amaral), a young architect from Colombia, arrived at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the suburbs of Detroit. Although she intended to further her studies in architecture there, she found herself instead in the weaving studios of Marianne Strengell. This sense of academic drift would carry her into new and exciting aesthetic realms that could not have been predicted and whose subsequent results have been unprecedented. With the unique fusion of her architectonic tendencies and her deep immersion in the color and material structure of fiber, Amaral represents in many ways the intertwining of the artistic ideals of the Academy’s founder, the architect Eliel Saarinen, and his wife, Loja, who introduced weaving to Cranbrook in the 1920s. Cranbrook holds a special significance in Amaral’s life, as the place where she not only found her artistic path but also first met her future husband, Jim Amaral, a fellow student at the Academy. We welcome Olga back to Cranbrook on this auspicious occasion. Part of the core mission of Cranbrook Art Museum is to tell the story of the Academy of Art, an internationally renowned graduate school of art, architecture, craft, and design whose utopian educational program has been in continuous operation since its founding in 1932. The Museum also strives to showcase the latest developments in contemporary art and to present new ways of understanding the totality of creative expression inherent in all forms of art, regardless of discipline or hierarchies of medium. Amaral’s life and work exemplify these aims and reflect the Academy’s goal to instill in future artists and designers a lifelong search for a singular vision and an artistic expression unique to its time. It is therefore a great honor to partner with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and with Olga and Jim on this exhibition and publication. This survey, the first major comprehensive museum presentation of Amaral’s work in the United States, brings together new scholarship to better contextualize the many innovative contributions of the artist to contemporary art at large and to the great legacy of modern Latin American abstraction in particular. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to Gary Tinterow, Director, the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and his excellent staff with whom we have had the pleasure to partner in the realization of this complex project, in particular Deborah Roldán, associate director of exhibitions; Cindi Strauss, the Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design; and Anna Walker, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design, and co-curator of the exhibition. At Cranbrook Art Museum, I would like