The Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, born Caracas, 1923 has died in Paris where he lived and worked since 1960. Cruz-Diez was a major protagonist in the field of Kinetic and Optical art, a movement that encouraged “an awareness of the instability of reality.” His body of work established him as one of the critical twentieth-century thinkers in the realm of colour.
In my works, colour appears and disappears during the course of a dialogue with real space and time – Carlos Cruz-Diez
Carlos Cruz-Diez’s visual art explored the perception of colour as an autonomous reality evolving in space and time, unaided by form or support, in a perpetual present.
His artworks are in the collections of institutions including Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, Tate Modern, London, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
Cruz-Diez wrote, “In my works, colour appears and disappears during the course of a dialogue with real space and time. What also emerges is the undeniable fact that the information we have acquired and the knowledge we have memorized throughout our lifetime are, probably, not true… at least to some extent”.
He added; When we view colour through an “elementary prism” that has been stripped of pre-existing meanings, it can awaken other sensory perception mechanisms that are more subtle and complex than those that have been ingrained in us by our cultural conditioning and the constant, ubiquitous barrage of information we face in our contemporary society.
His family who runs the Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Diez studio released this statement: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our beloved father, grandfather and great-grandfather, Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Diez, on Saturday 27th July 2019, in the city of Paris, France.”
Your love, your joy, your teachings and your colours,
will remain forever in our hearts.
Tributes will be held in the strict privacy of the family.
I was fortunate enough to meet and photograph the artist, in his vast studio, last September in Paris. He was an impressive and warm character. My visit was organised by Kaneka Subberwal, as part of the Art Bahrain, Across Borders programme. I got to see the artist’s process first hand absorbing his uncanny sense of colour-play and pattern. It was still a family run business. My sincere condolences – Paul Carter Robinson Artlyst Editor
Top Photo: P C Robinson © Artlyst 2019