Carlos Cruz-Diez
(b.1923, Venezuela – 2019)
Carlos Cruz-Diez was a Franco-Venezuelan artist and one of the greatest figures of kinetic-optic art. He was a contemporary theorist of colour whose artistic proposal is based on four chromatic conditions: subtractive, additive, inductive and reflected condition.
His research has brought art a new way of understanding the phenomenon of colour, greatly expanding its perceptual universe. Cruz-Diez’s work evolved around colour conceived as an autonomous reality, devoid of anecdotes, progressing in space and real time without past or future, in perpetual present.
Throughout his career Cruz-Diez has explored colour in 8 series: Couleur Additive [Additive Color], Physichromie, Induction Chromatique [Chromatic Induction], Chromointerférence, Transchromie, Chromosaturation, Chromoscope, and Couleur dans l’espace [Color in Space].
All of his colour-based experiments focus on variations of the observer’s position in relation to the work, the light directed at the work, and the relationship between the colours presented. Carlos Cruz-Diez was presented at the Turner Medal Award for his contribution to understandings Colour through Art back in April 2015.
Public collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris.
