Early Tapestries: Drawings, Sketches and Pictures

GEOMETIC DESIGNS

In the Ayacucho, Maximo’s hometown, weaving is transmitted through family, from generation to generation. Normally families of weavers have a loom or two inside the home, so seeing someone weave and helping through the process is part of daily life. Maximo began his textile journey helping out his father, who wove blankets for local consumption.

In the 1980s he starts developing his own designs, exploring the limits of what he could do on the loom. These were innitially geometrical, traditional designs.

The designs during this period were made with graph paper. This made the process of taking the drawing to the loom easier, as each line of the graph paper measured 1 millimeter and it represented 1 thread on the loom.

Maximo has always been fascinated by the different Andean cultures that inhabited Peru through time. He has been studying them throughout his life: reading, visiting museums, archeological sites, taking notes, sketches, etc. We can find these symbols and iconographies from his first tapestries until today.

These are some tapestries from this period:

Exploring outside the lines:

After the geometric period and traditional exploration, his designs and the idea of what could be achieved through weaving began to acquire more freedom, not necessarily constrained by the lines of graph paper. Curves start to appear!

These are some tapestries from this period:

This change in the way the designs were created gave him an independence to express through different forms and explore new themes. In the following images you can see a bit more of the creative process during this period.