Background
The Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez was born in the summer of 1923, in Caracas, where he grew up. As a boy he loved drawing in class, playing at his father’s desk with his rubber stamp and observing the world around him.
The Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez was born in the summer of 1923, in Caracas, where he grew up. As a boy he loved drawing in class, playing at his father’s desk with his rubber stamp and observing the world around him.
Carlos's first formal training in art came when he enrolled at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas in Caracas in 1940. During his years at school, he became friends with Jésu Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero, both Venezuelan artists who had similar interests in color and the Kinetic Art movement. He graduated in 1945, and was awarded a Diploma of Professor in Applied Arts.
In 1946 Carlos Cruz-Diez began working for the agency McCann-Erickson as their Creative Director. Cruz-Diez was kept extremely busy with his work at the agency, but continued making the figurative art that he worked during that period. In 1953 he began working as a professor at his alma mater, but then moved to Barcelona with his wife and two children in 1955. By this time his interest in abstract and interactive art had been stirred, and he began branching out into other forms as well.
Cruz-Diez was interested in moving to Paris from the moment he arrived in Barcelona, but didn’t speak French. He traveled many times to Paris during his time in Barcelona, but in 1956 decided that it would be better living in Venezuela after all. However, it became difficult to earn money and realize his projects, and in the end he was forced to take a job as a graphic designer, though he also worked at the Escuela de Periodismo at the Universidad Central in Caracas from 1958 onwards. His studies in color and light had begun in about 1957, and he created “Physichromie”, or “Physical Color”, in 1959.
Cruz-Diez and his family moved to Paris in 1960, and settled there. He met a number of other South American artist there, and was soon a part of the art scene in the city. The family kept their ties to Venezuela alive, visiting the country often. Cruz-Diez taught for a year at the Unité d’Études et Recherches d’Arts Plastiques at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1972. Cruz-Diez began working on further researches in color during these years, and apart from exhibitions of his work, also began working on large-scale public art projects.
Cruz-Diez was appointed Head of the Art Department at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados in Caracas in 1986, a position he held till 1993. The first edition of his book, “Reflections on Color” was published in 1989. The Fundación del Museo de la Estampa y del Diseño Carlos Cruz-Diez was established in Caracas in 1997, and the artist was appointed President of the institution for life. The Fondation Cruz-Diez was set up in 2005 to preserve the heritage of the artist’s work in color and light.
The artist became a French citizen in 2008, close to 50 years after his arrival in Paris. A major exhibition of his work was held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 2011. The following year he was made Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris. The artist lives in Paris.
Carlos Cruz-Diez is considered to be one of the greatest artistic innovators of the 20th and 21st centuries.He is believed to be one of the fathers and greatest figures of kinetic and op art, and has been called a 'master of color' and line, adept at creating fluid, participatory visual experiences. His body of work has established him as one of the key 20th-century thinkers in the realm of color.
Transchromie
Ambientación Cromática
Chromosaturation pour un lieu public
Fisicromía 2250
Transchromie (from the exhibition “Cruz-Diez. Cinq propositions sur la couleur”)
Chromointerférence Mécanique
Couleur Additive. Recherche d’atelier
Couleur dans l'Espace
Physichromie 625
Environnement Chromointerférent
Induction Chromatique. Édition Denise René 1
Chromosaturation (from the exhibition "Acontecer Cromático")
Fisicromía 1
Physichromie No. 326
Méduses Chromatiques. Chromostructure Spatiale
Transchromie (from the exhibition "60/72: Douze Ans d'Art Contemporain en France")
Cruz-Diez has consistently worked through his career focusing solely on color, line and (viewer) perception. His visual style can be consistently identified throughout his work spanning his entire career. His work contains an element in which the viewer actively participates in viewing the work because the color changes and presents a sensation of movement as the relative position of the viewer changes. Cruz-Diez uses the moiré effect to produce this sensation of motion by his particular composition of lines.
Cruz-Diez often referred to environment and events and part the experience of viewing his art. Because he was working with light and perception, his environment most likely needed to be controlled. Since the perception of the piece changes with the viewer movement, the individual images presented were considered events. Interesting enough these were terms used by the Fluxus group, who were also internationally based, and working around the same time, the late fifties and early sixties.
Throughout his career Cruz-Diez has focused on four types of self-defined op art Categories: Physichoromies, Choromointerferences, Chromosaturations, and Transchromies. All of his color-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 colors presented.
In 1997, Cruz-Diez was appointed for life the president and member of the superior council of the "Museo de la Estampa y del Diseño Carlos Cruz-Diez" Foundation, Caracas. In 1998, he was appointed as an honorary member of Academia de Ciencias, Arte y Letras, Mérida, Venezuela.
Carlos Cruz-Diez is married and has two children.
