Carlos Cruz-Diez: Experiments with Physical Color

May 28 - July 15,2025

From the MFAH: "Some two dozen works by the Venezuelan master Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923-2019), who dedicated his career to investigating color as an autonomous element free of any support. In his view, color is not a pigment on a solid surface but an unstable “situation” resulting from the projection of light on objects and the way this light is processed by the eye. Insofar as color depends on the movement of the viewer in front of the work, it also entails a participatory, interactive experience. Cruz- Diez combined chromatic theory, kinetics, advances in the physiology of vision, machine engineering, and the painter’s craft to produce innovative objects that defy categorization. The most radical are his Physichromies, his largest and most complex series on “physical color” begun in 1959 and featuring more than 4,000 variants produced over half a century. Curator: Mari Carmen Ramírez Location: Nancy and Rich Kinder Building. 5500 Main, Gallery 101 Illustration: Physichromie Panam 150, 2014, screen-printed aluminum modules an acrylic (Plexiglas) insert, with aluminum strip frame, gift of the Cruz-Diez Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston."

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