Cruz Diez, Carlos, 1923-2019

Carlos Cruz-Diez (17 August 1923 – 27 July 2019) was a Franco-Venezuelan artist recognized within the kinetic art movement. He lived and worked in Paris from 1960 until his death. Cruz-Diez proposed conceiving color as an autonomous reality that develops in time and space, without the aid of form or the need for a support. His work encompasses eight investigations: Additive Color (Couleur Additive), Physichromie, Chromatic Induction (Induction Chromatique), Chromointerférence, Transchromie, Chromosaturation, Chromoscope, and Color in Space (Couleur à l’Espace). Cruz-Diez is one of the primary figures and most prominent representatives of kinetic art. His research has provided a new approach to the phenomenon of color in the field of art, particularly through the development of color perception. As a color theorist, Cruz-Diez research based on three chromatic situations: subtractive, additive, and reflective which led to a new cognitive approach to the phenomenon of color, expanding its field of perception. Cruz-Diez apprehended color as an autonomous reality that evolves in space and time. His abstract works are defined by the use of color and lines to create the impression of movement and are exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas.