Physichromie No 480, 1969
Carlos Cruz-Diezexpand_more
Acrylic on cardboard, plastic inserts, woodexpand_more
The Mary Ruth Weisel Endowment for Africa, Oceania, and the Americas and the Ted and Dr. Roberta Mann Foundation Endowment Fundexpand_more 2023.54
Not on Viewexpand_more
Throughout his long career, Cruz-Diez dedicated himself to creating a visual discourse around the qualities, characteristics, and perception of color. His research, based in science as well as in the study of different artists, unfolded into eight series of works, each one of them investigating specific aspects of color. The one the artist called Physichromie, with which he began experimenting in 1959, was the first one.
The Physichromie series explores the idea that color is not a permanent or static phenomenon but rather an ever-changing one, whose perception is affected by ambient light, by reflection, irradiation, and interaction with other colors. This interaction can be such as to actually provoke human brain to see colors that don’t really exist in the composition. The possibility of creating a platform in which color can manifest itself as in real life, that is, like an ephemeral and fleeting phenomenon was the artist’s goal in this series. As Cruz-Diez himself would put it, he wanted to “create amazement about a phenomenon that would otherwise go unnoticed”.
Details
- Title
- Physichromie No 480
- Artist Life
- 1923 - 2019
- Role
- Artist
- Accession Number
- 2023.54
- Curator Approved
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