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.
Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Diez was born on 17 August 1923, in La Pastora, Caracas, Venezuela. He was the son of Carlos Eduardo Cruz Lander, a chemist and poet of Canarian descent, and Mariana Diez Feo. On his mother's side, his family tree includes many prominent figures from South American post-colonial history. He was the great-grandson of General Mariano Diez, who significantly contributed to the independence of Venezuela. One of General Diez's most recognized sons (Carlos's great-uncle) was Manuel Antonio Diez, Vice President of the Republic during the mandate of Joaquín Crespo (1884-1886).
"My life project included painting and family at the same time," he wrote in his memoir Living in Art: Memories of What I Remember.
As a child, Cruz-Diez was fascinated by the red projections on his white shirt caused by sunlight passing through cola bottles in his father's plant. He studied at the Colegio Atenas and later attended high school at the Liceo Andrés Bello.
1940: Training Period and Social Painting
Cruz-Diez began his studies at the School of Plastic and Applied Arts in Caracas in 1940, where he discovered what he called his "awakening to the euphoria of color". He received lessons from masters such as Marcos Castillo and Luis Alfredo López Méndez. He became friends with Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto, who would later become his peers in geometric abstraction and the kinetic movement. He graduated in 1945 as a Professor of Applied Arts and Manual Arts.
At that time, he was interested in the work of Francisco Narváez and Héctor Poleo. While studying, he collaborated with humorous cartoons for the newspaper La Esfera and the children's magazine Tricolor. His painting at that time focused on social realism.
However, already in this formative period, he became aware of the importance of working with color. He learned from one of his teachers, Rafael Ramón González, not to paint the flat and evident color of objects but to interpret the nuances that compose it. Years later, he delved deeper into this precept, ultimately realizing one of his greatest discoveries: appreciating that color is in the space that surrounds us and that the key lies in knowing how to see color.
In 1944, he worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for the magazine El Farol of the Creole Petroleum Corporation and also illustrated other publications. He also created comics for various Venezuelan newspapers. A year later, upon graduating, he began working as a professor of Painting and Art History at the School of Visual Arts and Applied Arts in Caracas.
In 1946, he was appointed creative director of the advertising agency McCann-Erickson Venezuela and later, in 1953, worked as an illustrator for the newspaper El Nacional.
He held his first solo exhibition at the Venezuelan-American Institute of Caracas in 1947, and three years later, became part of the editorial board of the magazine Taller.
During this period, the artist focused his work on the representation of marginalized and precarious sectors of the city of Caracas, characterized by social inequality. A key moment of this era was Héctor Poleo's exhibition in 1947 upon his return from Mexico. Works such as Los tres comisarios (The Three Commissioners, 1943) or Paisaje de los Andes (Andean Landscape, 1941) revealed to him that social reality could be painted in a different way, without the Cezannian brushstroke, and also that it was possible to address subjects other than landscapes, nudes, or still lifes. This began a series of paintings such as Adán el chichero, Las aguadoras, and Techo, among many others that deal with social and folkloric themes.
In the early 1950s, Cruz-Diez linked his artistic proposal to the ideal of socially committed art, denouncing social injustices. However, he soon realized that representing these problems did not offer a solution for the communities identified in his work. Ultimately, he understood that his social calling could manifest through other channels, leading him to create his own language: "art is a complex structure of communication, expression, discovery, and invention." Thus, he began to explore the perception of color.
In 1951, after leaving McCann-Erickson, he married Mirtha Delgado Lorenzo and began working as an illustrator for the Caracas newspaper El Nacional. In 1954, he became interested in abstract trends and developed a series of projects for outdoor murals using geometric elements. That same year, he presented these projects at the XV Official Salon (1954), which sparked surprise due to his shift toward abstraction.
Between 1954 and 1959, Cruz-Diez's work went through several stages of study: Signos Vegetales (Plant Signs, 1955–1956); Objetos Rítmicos Móviles (Mobile Rhythmic Objects, 1956–1957); and the Estudio de la percepción Óptica y la inestabilidad del plano (Study of Optical Perception and Plane Instability, 1956–1959). During this time, he also engaged in intense reading, research, and reflection, which led him to focus his attention and work around the chromatic phenomenon.
In 1955, he lived for a year and a half in El Masnou, Barcelona, Spain. That year, he traveled to Paris and visited the exhibition "Le Mouvement" at the Galerie Denise René, where his friend Jesús Rafael Soto was participating. This trip inspired a new direction for Carlos Cruz-Diez. The following year, he exhibited the Signos Vegetales (Plant Signs) and Objetos Rítmicos Móviles (Mobile Rhythmic Objects) series at the Galería Buchholz in Madrid. After brief trips to New York and Paris in 1957, he returned to Caracas and founded the Estudio de Artes Visuales, dedicated to graphic and industrial design. In 1959, he created his first Additive Color (Couleur Additive) and his first Physichromie.