This research, begun in the 1950s, reached, with the works made in 2013, what is perhaps its maximum expression, the result of a deep reflection in which “nothing is left to chance”, as the artist argued at the time.
These are paintings in which flat and three-dimensional spaces are combined. In these works, the play and distortion between the flat (that is, the effect achieved in the purely two-dimensional that the artist calls additive color) and the three-dimensional result obtained with physicromie, a solution created by the artist in 1959, is accentuated. consists of the insertion of elements perpendicular to the painting that force the viewer to move to try to guess not only the painting in its total complexity, but also to experience the different effects of the infinite chromatic variations, creating what Cruz-Diez calls “evolutionary situations of the reflective and subtractive color ”.
These outstanding elements, which identify the physicromies of the rest of Cruz-Diez’s lines of work, can be opaque or translucent; they can also be rectangular and trapezoid in terms of shape. For the exhibition, the artist selected a set of these last solutions in the form of a trapezoid, of which he said: “due to their shape, trapezoid filters produce greater variations in the intensity of the irradiated color, while generating areas in the work where they separately appreciate additive color combinations and other, more dynamic ones, where it is possible to simultaneously appreciate additive color, subtractive color and reflection color ”.
Carlos Cruz-Diez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on August 17, 1923. Formed in his home country, in 1960 he moved to France after a brief stay in Spain. In Paris he continues and articulates his proposals on the perception of color as an autonomous reality that, devoid of any anecdote, is the protagonist of all his artistic production.
During his life, he received numerous awards and distinctions: The Legion of Honor (France), Commandeur de l ‘Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) or Officer de l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France); last 2012 he received the Penagos Award from the Mapfre Foundation. He is Doctor Honoris Causa from various universities around the world and has exhibited in numerous museums and biennials (such as Sao Paulo and Venice). His work is preserved in museums such as MoMA (New York), Pompidou (Paris) and Reina Sofía (Madrid).
In 2011 the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston opened a retrospective that toured much of America.
