Object Lesson

Sotheby’s At Large- Andrea Zorrilla

“Controversial, groundbreaking and innovative, Carlos Cruz-Diez is one of the radical artists of post-war modern art. Why controversial and why such a radical? Cruz-Diez chose to dedicate the entirety of his artistic career, which now spans over 60 years, to one of the most complex and problematic subjects in the history of post-war modernism: the concept behind color.1 His contribution to the still on-going dialogue on this topic is equal to those of his peers Yves Klein, Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, and even more recently James Turrell. The premise proposed by Cruz-Diez in the 1950s is the belief that color is in fact a living organism capable of endless mutations and possibilities of metamorphosis. The challenge that Cruz-Diez imposed upon himself was one that few artists had attempted before, “to liberate color from the two-dimensional plane” and transform it into a constantly changing “physical experience”.”

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