Carlos Cruz-Diez

Carlos Cruz-Diez – Tracing the essence of colour

Born in Caracas on 17 August 1923, Carlos Cruz-Diez studied fine art and art education at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas y Aplicadas in his hometown, graduating in 1945. After a short period working in the industry, he joined an advertising agency in 1946 in an executive capacity, a job that took him to New York for several years. Carlos Cruz-Diez returned to his homeland of Venezuela in 1957 where he opened his own studio, the Estudio de Artes Visuales. Around this time, he began to research intensively the role of colour in kinetic art and in doing so, developed a significant pioneering practice that had a far-reaching influence on the understanding of colour in the art world, changing it permanently. In total, eight series were produced in which Carlos Cruz-Diez traced the complex essence of colour with various approaches. The artist’s work included not only paintings and graphic works such as silkscreens but also installations of sometimes considerable dimensions. 

Carlos Cruz-Diez remained a true artist

Carlos Cruz-Diez counted Josef Albers and Georges Seurat amongst the artistic role models who exerted a great influence on him in school and college. Both artists devoted themselves with zeal to the interrelations and principles of colour, thereby providing the fertile ground from which Carlos Cruz-Diez could flourish. In his Venezuelan homeland, Cruz-Diez stood in close proximity to Alejandro Otero and Jesus Rafael Soto, with whom he is often understood as a triumvirate of kinetic art. His insights and experiments are understood within colour theory as important key works. These successes are certainly also related to the great consistency that pervades and characterises the artist’s entire oeuvre. Cruz-Diez always remained true to his principal line which threaded through his career and led him from insight to insight. His approach of breaking down colour and form to their original meaning brings him close to the English critic Clive Bell who had already postulated this in his 1914 theoretical work Significant Form in Art. 

Colour is apolitical for Cruz-Diez

As an apolitical artist, Carlos Cruz-Diez was at times controversial in his homeland because he also maintained good relations with the ruling military regime. Despite these short-term fogs, his work is internationally viewed as a significant contribution to the history of concrete art, and his pictures and objects adorn collections in the world’s most prestigious museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Pinakothek der Modern in Munich. Carlos Cruz-Diez received a great number of prizes and awards for his work, not only in his homeland of Venezuela but also in France, Spain, England and the USA. As a lecturer in kinetic art, he taught in Caracas, his birth town, and in his adopted city of Paris, where he died on 27 July 2019.