Cruz Diez

(1923 - 2019)

Carlos Cruz-Diez spent his life as a passionate painter and enjoyed a very colorful life. Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1923, as a boy he loved drawing in class, playing at his father’s desk with his rubber stamp and observing the world around him. At age 17 Cruz-Diez decided he wanted to be an artist and enrolled at the School of Fine Art, Caracas. Always the first student to arrive in the morning, he was ecstatic. In order to finance his studies he drew comics and after graduating worked in graphic design and as an illustrator, whilst developing his painting. As an academic painter Cruz-Diez was very successful but the more he studied art history the more he understood he wasn’t inventing art. He wanted to change his path and chose the relatively unexplored path of color as his focus.