Carlos Cruz-diez

Venezuelan artist who explored the world of colour

Carlos Cruz-diez, artist. Born: 17 August 1923 in Caracas, Venezuela. Died: 27 July 2019 in Paris, France, aged 95.

Carlos Cruz-diez, a leading Venezuelan artist who won international acclaim for his work with colour and the style known as kinetic art, has died in Paris. He was 95.

“Your love, your joy, your teachings and your colours, will remain forever in our hearts,” said a family statement posted on Cruz-diez’s art foundation website.

Cruz-diez developed a reputation as one of Latin America’s most prominent artists in the second half of the 20th century.

His installations have been featured in major international art museums and public spaces. His work has recently been on display in exhibitions in Paris, London, Saudi Arabia

and Panama. “Nobody understood the mystery of color like him,” Venezuelan writer Leonardo Padron said on Twitter.

“Your work transcended barriers and filled us with pride as Venezuelans,” said opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is in a power struggle with President Nicolas Maduro as the country endures a humanitarian crisis.

“I’m not from the past, I’m from today,” Cruz-diez said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York in 2008. He said he defined himself as an “explorer”.

Cruz-diez explored “the ambiguity of colour,” sometimes creating art with transparent strips of material that filtered light and showed different colour combinations to viewers moving around his artwork.

Cruz-diez studied art in Caracas and, after graduating, worked as an artistic director for the US advertising agency then known as Mccann Erickson and as an illustrator for Venezuela’s El Nacional newspaper.

In 1957, he founded a visual arts school in Caracas and moved to Paris two years later to pursue art. He made his home in France, teaching and