Carlos Cruz-Diez Wins The Turner Medal For Colour 2015

Since 1941, stemming from the Physical Society, The Colour Group’s mission is to promote the study of colour and to assist the dissemination of colour knowledge in all its aspects.

Every two years, alternating with the Newton Medal rewarding scientific contributions, the Colour Group presents the Turner Medal to a distinguished artist in recognition of their outstanding contribution towards understanding colour in the Visual arts. Yesterday evening, the Colour Group was honoured to present the Tuner Medal Award 2015 to Carlos Cruz-Diez.

Carlos Cruz-Diez with his Physichromie 500 at the exhibition “Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection”, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2014

Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923) Franco-Venezuelan artist, Carlos Cruz-Diez is one of the great figures of kinetic-optic art. Living and working in Paris since 1960, his artistic proposal is based on four chromatic conditions: subtractive, additive, inductive and reflected condition.

Cruz-Diez has brought to art a new way of understanding the phenomenon of colour, greatly expanding its perceptual universe. He understands colour as an autonomous reality, devoid of anecdotes and form, progressing in space and real time, without past or future and in the perpetual present.

Carlos Cruz-Diez’s work is present in many permanent collections including the Tate Modern, London; the University of Essex; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany.

During the last few years, his work has been exhibited in the UK at The Mayor Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, Tate Liverpool and Christie’s Mayfair among others.

In 2014, as part of the exhibition Radical Geometry in the Royal Academy of Art, the artist was invited to discuss his experiments with colour and movement, and how he engages viewers with his art, with Joanne Harwood, Director of the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America.

He was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial to decorate the Edmund Gardner ship to recreate the concept of dazzle painting, as a part of the commemoration of the Great 14-18 War. Located in Canning Graving Dock, Liverpool, the Carlos Cruz-Diez’s dazzle ship will be visible until 2018.

The Turner Medal has been awarded to Carlos Cruz-Diez following a video presentation of the artist’s life and work which took place in the Great Hall, City University London on Wednesday 1st April 2015. After the presentation, there has been a live video-conversation between the artist from his studio in Panama and the public.

Previous Turner Medal recipients: Peter Sedgley, Albert Irvin, Martin Kemp, Roy Osborne, Zandra Rhodes, John Gage, Bridget Riley, Kaffe Fassett. 

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