Cruz Diez

Cruz-Diez (Caracas / Venezuela, 1923 - 2019)

Cruz-Diez was a Venezuelan painter, sculptor, and teacher, whose art derived from social realism, through kinetic art, to geometricism and the phenomenology of color. Between 1940 and 1945, Carlos Cruz-Diez studied at the School of Fine Arts in Caracas, also graduating as a teacher. In 1944 and 1945, he was a designer for the publications of the Creole Petroleum Corporation Esso and then, until 1951, artistic director of the McCann-Erickson advertising agency in Caracas. In 1946, he received the first Cartel de Alfabetización award in Caracas. He held his first solo exhibition at the Venezuelan-American Institute in 1947 and traveled to New York for advertising training. In 1952 and 1953, he won an award at the Venezuela Art Salon. He worked as a cartoonist for the newspaper El Nacional and participated in the II São Paulo Biennial, returning for the IV, VII, IX (when he won an award), XV, and XXV editions of the event.

In 1955, Cruz-Diez began teaching history of applied arts at the School of Fine Arts in Caracas. During this period, his activities combined teaching with advertising work and an artistic work marked by social realism. After 1954, he abandoned figurative art and began working on the optical phenomena of color. That same year, he moved to Barcelona, ​​where he remained until 1956 and began research in kinetic art, which resulted in the Fisiocromías series.

In 1957, the sculptor returned to Venezuela to create the Visual Arts Studio, focusing on graphic arts and industrial design. He also became an illustrator for the Ministry of Education and Mene magazine. Between 1958 and 1960, he taught and served as vice-director of the School of Fine Arts in Caracas and as a professor of typography and design at the Faculty of Journalism at the Central University of Venezuela.

In 1960, he moved to Paris, where he continued his artistic and teaching career. In 1962, he exhibited at the 31st Venice Biennale, returning in 1970 and 1986, when he was a special guest. In 1966, he received the Grand Prize at the III American Art Biennial in Córdoba, Argentina. In Paris in 1967, he participated in the exhibition Lumière et Mouvement with Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto and Argentine artist Julio Le Parc. In 1969, he won the Second Prize at the International Painting Festival in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, and in 1971, the National Prize for Visual Arts in Venezuela.

In the 1970s, he began developing famous series such as Additive Color, Physiochromia, Chromatic Inductions, Cromointerferences, and Chromosaturation Cabins. Between 1972 and 1973, he taught kinetic techniques at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. He was a full professor and director of the International Institute of Advanced Studies (IDEA) in Caracas. In 1992, he exhibited works at the Latin American Art of the Twentieth Century exhibition in New York, at Expo-Seville 92 in Spain, and at L'Art en Mouvemenet at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1997, he was appointed life president of the Carlos Cruz-Diez Museum of Printing and Design Foundation. Two years later, he opened the exhibition El Rojo, el Verde y el Azul, entre la Luz y las Tinieblas, in Havana, and donated a large public sculpture, Inducción cromática para La Habana, for the fortieth anniversary of the Casa de Las Américas, in Cuba.