The University Museum and Art Gallery, in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Foundation, Paris; China Youth Publishing Group, Beijing; ZBL & Associates, Paris and in association with Le French May, Hong Kong, is honoured to present to the public an exhibition entitled “Carlos Cruz-Diez: Circumstance and Ambiguity of Colour” of Carlos Cruz-Diez’s capturing work. The artist’s advanced theories on the perception of colour will be made visual in a display of both paintings and light installations.

Mr Cruz-Diez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1923, and he has lived and worked in Paris since 1960. His artistic roots reach back to the Movimiento Cinético (Kinetic Movement) of the 1950s and 1960s. As his thinking on the visual arts has evolved, his ideas have changed attitudes on how colour is perceived in art. Mr Cruz-Diez describes colour as an “autonomous reality, devoid of anecdotes, that evolves in real time and space with no need of form or support”, and the presentation of his work embraces this theory and introduces the findings of eight research projects that reveal the myriad ways in which colour behaves: Couleur Additive (Additive Colour), Physichromie, Induction Chromatique (Chromatic Induction), Chromointerférence, Transchromie, Chromosaturation, Chromoscope, and Couleur dans l’espace (Colour in Space).

Celebrated for his attention to light and colours, he has been ranked among other masters of colours including Seurat (1859–1891), Cezanne (1839–1906), Albers (1888–1976), Frank-Stella (b. 1936). The French Minister of Culture awarded Carlos Cruz-Diez with an “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres – Commander” in order to acknowledge his prominent achievement and artistic status. His works are on view in Hong Kong for the first time, and they manifest his theoretical concepts and guide us to perceive the ‘ambiguity of colour’.

They are most grateful to our partners, the Cruz-Diez Foundation, China Youth Publishing Group, ZBL & Associates and Le French May, for the opportunity to share Carlos Cruz-Diez’s extraordinary oeuvre with the Hong Kong public and to experience the master artist’s diverse method of observing and distinguishing colours.

-University Museum and Art Gallery of The University of Hong Kong