Frogs are green, tomatoes are red, and ducklings are yellow. These are the kinds of fundamental certainties about color that we learn from a very early age through nursery rhymes, stories, and coloring books: color is intrinsic to the object.

However fundamental and universal these truths may seem, they were the center of attention in the work of the Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923 – Paris, 2019), who took on the task of exploring the world, questioning the phenomena that govern it, and revolutionizing the type of artistic representation that emerges from how we percieve our environment.

El color que acontece [Color Happens] exposes through works belonging to five lines of investigation that he developed throughout his career, that Cruz-Diez plants a seed of doubt regarding those truths we have assumed our entire lives. Each of his works vibrates and unfolds almost unbelievably before our eyes, exposing a truth that is both fascinating and revealing: color is something momentary, circumstantial, and fleeting. More than a certainty, it is an event.