Carlos Cruz Diez
Bio
Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuela, 1923 - France, 2019). Considered one of the most important figures in Op Art and Kinetic Art. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Caracas, where he earned a diploma in Applied Arts (1940). In Venezuela, he worked as an illustrator for various media outlets. He moved to Paris in the 1960s, interested in exploring Kinetic Art in the city that had been the birthplace of the movement in the 1930s. From then on, Cruz-Diez enjoyed an unstoppable career spanning more than 70 years, during which he compiled eight studies on color, form, space, and time that remain influential worldwide.
Statement
Considered one of the most important figures in Op Art and Kinetic Art, an artistic movement that champions "the awareness of the instability of reality," his research reveals him as one of the 20th century's leading thinkers on color. Carlos Cruz-Diez's artistic discourse revolves around the chromatic phenomenon conceived as an autonomous reality that evolves in space and time, independent of form or support, in a continuous present. "I abandoned the wall for space. I don't make paintings, I make situations, in which things are constantly changing in time and space," the artist said in a 2015 BBC interview.
