Pre-Columbian Nazca Stepped Textile Poncho, Nazca Peru, 200-400 AD

Complete Nazca Unku in vibrant red with blue, green, yellow and white squares forming V design around the brown neck opening. The multicolor squares in stepped design make a diamond ...

Complete Pre-Columbian Nazca textile with stepped zig-zag design in yellow, ochre red, and brown/black shades with yellow fringes.

A very rare surviving Pre-Columbian Nazca Stepped Textile Tunic, Nazca Peru, 200-600 AD. Museum mounted on a linen covered panel. Impressive piece overall. Stepped design and frin...

A large Nazca-Wari woven textile panel known as Llika or Awayo (shawl) from Ica Valley on the south coast of nowadays Peru. Professionally mounted and conversed on a linen-backed wood frame and presented in an acrylic shadow box. Shawls with this step design were identified as made from the period of 700 to 1100 AD during the transitional period when Nazca went under the expanded rule of the Wari empire. The textile was finely woven from a camelid fiber dyed with natural pigments. The work strikes the viewer immediately with its unexpected modernity. The simple, bold and repetitive geometry with the scintillating color blocks created a lyrical visual rhythm and could easily mistake it as an abstract art from the 20th century. The step design was one of the unusual abstract motifs used by the pre-Columbian weavers from Nazca, who created some of the most mysterious and soul-stirring work with a minimalism aesthetic that was rarely seen in any other ancient textile art. Considering that the artists were completely isolated without the influences of other cultures, their intrinsic creativity and artistic vision are even more impressive. Provenance: From the collection of Lee M...