The Artist
Constantino Laura - An Artist Acclaimed Around the World
In 2022, the Peruvian government named him Amauta of Peruvian Craftsmanship (Amauta meaning "Master" in Quechua), a distinction reserved for the country's most distinguished artisans. Only 42 people have received this title in history.
His work has traveled far and wide:
- 2025: International Textile Art Biennial "From Lausanne to Beijing," China
- 2024: UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handicrafts of Latin America in Santiago, Chile, and the Innovation Award at the Rome Art Biennial
- 2022: Exhibition at the Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, in tribute to Molière
- 2021: Award of Excellence at the "From Lausanne to Beijing" Biennial for "The Fertile Earth Awakens to the Kiss of Hope"
He has also taken part in dozens more exhibitions and received many other honors in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, the United States, and China. (See the full list here)
Today, his workshop serves as a permanent school for young weavers, passing on the legacy of Peru's ancient textile art. Constantino Laura continues to represent Peru at the world's most prestigious events, consolidating his position as one of the most influential figures in contemporary textile art.
Constantino "Tino" Laura: Weaver of Stories
Constantino Laura was born in 1963 in Huamanga, Ayacucho, in the heart of the Peruvian Andes. He grew up surrounded by skeins and threads, the son of a family of artisans for whom weaving was a language before it was a trade.
At 22, he arrived in Lima with two dreams: to study painting and theater. Life led him back to the loom. And it was there, between warp and weft, that he found his truest voice.
Since 1985, Tino has broken with the Ayacucho weaving tradition by creating Peru's first pictorial tapestries, fusing ancestral techniques with the spirit of Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, and Chagall. The result is something striking that stops people in their tracks: at first glance, it looks like a painting. Up close, they discover it is a weaving with chromatic textures and intricate reliefs.
In 2003, he won second place nationally in the First Innovation Contest for Peruvian Craft Design, organized by the Peruvian government, and was later hired by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to train artisans in various regions of Peru, an experience that enriched his own style with textile techniques from across the country.
In His Own Words
"To step up to a loom and weave is a flight over seas and luminous skies, a stroll through dunes and mysterious steppes, interlacing memories of life, imagining landscapes of multicolored lights and silent sunsets, peopled by timeless beings and eternal gazes…
Weaving, as it was for our ancestors, will be a labor of life and faith, of expression and magic that sensitizes and transmutes matter, giving voice and word to the material (wool). Each weft that crosses the warp will fold like their weeping, coil like their faith, and rise like their dreams. Thus the techniques were born: the llana (plain weave), like their affection and friendship; the calado (openwork), like their perseverance when they climbed to master the mountains; and the anillado (ringed weave), which stands out like their ringing laughter at seeing the pink and yellow flower of the kantu and the retama come to life.
As we weave, colors burst forth in an eternal dance, like our gazes that cross in a lively dialogue speaking of epic and glorious moments, of loves and heartbreaks, of hopes and silenced dreams, of lights and shadows, giving rise to new forms, colors, and shades, blends of races and feelings.
The loom brings with it dawns and dusks where the most beautiful tapestries will be woven: tapestries of the soul in love, and carpets of flowering fields where we will find markings both our own and strange. Such is our loom of every morning, which we will approach again and again…"
— Constantino Laura
Why Buy a Tapestry by Constantino?
Constantino's tapestries are ideal for decorating your home, office, or business. They can be the centerpiece of a room with their striking colors and deep meanings, or a wonderful complement if you choose one of the more understated, geometric designs. These works are the perfect synthesis of expressionism and the classical pictorial style of Western paintings with pre-Columbian textile techniques and cultural elements.
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