Venezuela commemorates the centenary of the artist Carlos Cruz-Diez

Although he lived in Paris since the 1960s, his work is linked to Venezuela and many of his creations are icons of Venezuelanness.

CARACAS.- He had an obsession, color, with a living work on the streets of cities like Paris, London, New York and his native Caracas. Venezuela celebrates this Thursday the centenary of the birth of Carlos Cruz-Diez, a man who made history in modern art.

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Cruz-Diez starred from this Caribbean country, along with other artists such as Jesús Soto or Juvenal Ravelo, a powerful current in kineticism. His physichromies, mixtures of colors that dance to the rhythm of the observer's movement, became symbols of op art or optical art.

He has an invention: color metamorphosis. It happens with the displacement of the spectator, with ranges of colors that are not perceived if you are static in front of the work. Once the movement begins, the metamorphosis occurs," Ravelo, a disciple and friend of the teacher, told AFP a few years ago.

A bus that emulates a tram inaugurated this Thursday, as a tribute, a tour of the works of Cruz-Diez in Valencia (Carabobo state, center-north). The colors are reflected in the dark glasses of the attendees, who take photos with their cell phones.

"What better excuse than its centenary to bring the citizen closer to these works, to get to know them in a little more depth, to relate to the public space and also as a way of promoting the conservation of all that heritage," Eduardo told AFP. Monzón, coordinator of the Más Valencia initiative, which organized the tour.

"Maestro Cruz-Diez is an unequivocal reference," he adds.
"continuous mutation"
Born on August 17, 1923 and raised in the Caracas neighborhood of La Pastora, Cruz-Diez fell in love with color since he was a child, when it mutated before his eyes as light bounced off the glass of the soda bottles from the artisan factory run by his father.

He followed that passion until the end of his days.

He has never stopped working since he began studying at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas in 1940. With gray hair and beard due to the passage of time, he died in Paris of natural causes on July 27, 2019.

Color is: "an ephemeral situation, an autonomous reality in continuous mutation", commented Cruz-Diez, and, like the facts: "it takes place in space and in real time, without past or future, in a perpetual present" , he said when analyzing his own work.

Venezuela conmemora centenario del artista Carlos Cruz-Diez

Winner of the National Plastic Arts Award in 1971, he gained worldwide fame with recognition in Argentina, Brazil, France, Spain and the United States, among other countries.

"Art for everyone"
Although he lived in Paris since the 1960s, when democracy was born in Venezuela after the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-1959), his work is linked to his country and many of his creations are icons. of the Venezuelan

Gigantic additive-colored Chrominterference covers, with colorful tiles, the floor and walls of the Simón Bolívar International Airport, which serves Caracas.

A photo in this work is the last memory of thousands of Venezuelans who migrated fleeing the crisis.

His art is exhibited in museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London or the Center George Pompidou in Paris, but also on the street.

It includes penetrable, long colored cables that can be traversed, making the viewer experience not only visual, but tactile as well.

"Art for everyone (...). Art did not stay between four walls in private collections and museums. Kineticism was incorporated into architecture and later into the street," says Ravelo.

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