Carlos Cruz-Diez

The breakthrough came in 1959^[1] with the first Physichromies, structures of parallel plastic fins mounted on a painted surface, which produce colour fields that shift as the viewer moves. The colour is not painted on; it emerges from the interaction of reflected and transmitted light, changing with position and time. Cruz-Diez described colour as an autonomous event, something that exists in the retina and the act of looking rather than in the pigment itself. This was not merely a formal proposition but a philosophical one about the instability of perception.

He moved to Paris in 1960^[1], and the city became his base for the rest of his life. His subsequent series, Chromointerférences, Inductions Chromatiques, and Chromosaturation (conceived in 1965), extended the same investigation into environmental installations, large-scale public works, and participatory spaces where visitors move through fields of pure chromatic effect. A Double Physichromie was installed at the University of Houston in 2009; his airport floor at Maiquetía in Venezuela remains one of the most visited works of kinetic art^[1] in the world.

Recognition was extensive: the International Painting Award at the São Paulo Bienal in 1967^[1], the National Prize of Plastic Arts of Venezuela in 1971, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France in 2002, the Légion d'Honneur in 2012, and the Turner Medal for Colour in 2015. He died in Paris in July 2019^[1], aged 95.