Carlos Cruz-Diez

Private Collection, Europe
Thence by descent to the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although it fails to fully convey the changing nature and optical variations of the work. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are two tiny perforations to the centre of the vertical edges, which appear to be intentional. Very close inspection reveals a small number of shallow and unobtrusive scratches to the steel frame. Extremely close inspection reveals a small number of minute media accretions scattered in places on the lower right quadrant.
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Sotheby’s is delighted to be offering four works from a Distinguished European Collection. The present, beautifully cohesive group of examples by Sergio Camargo, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Victor Vasarely reflects a forward-thinking taste, and speak eloquently of the collector’s passion for elegant, timeless geometric compositions.

The four present works remarkably underline the rich heritage of Concrete Art, the Zero movement and issues of reduction, which are currently undergoing a major revival.

Dated between 1952 and 1973, this group encompasses the key aspects of postwar geometrical abstraction. It was a time of great buoyancy in the field of reductionism and optical/kinetic experimentation - both in Europe with artists such as Victor Vasarely, Günther Uecker and Bridget Riley, and Latin America, with Sergio Camargo, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesùs Rafael Soto. In New York, the seminal exhibition The Responsive Eye opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965 as an attempt to theorise and unify this proliferating trend. In Latin America and Europe alike, numerous manifestos were published and artist’s groups formed, all tackling the theme of reduction and the optical challenge somewhat uniquely. There were, amongst many others: Madì, Asociación Arte Concreto/Invención and Arte Ruptura in Latin America and Zero, Gruppo N, Equipo 57 and the Concrete Art movement in Europe. This paralleled production of works focusing on structure and geometry in response to the subjectivity of representation in two such geographically remote places might seem surprising at first. After the Second World War, the oppressive political regimes in place in some Latin American countries drove many artists to Europe where they further developed their pure, spatially dynamic vocabulary. However, artists such as Camargo and Cruz-Diez pushed the boundaries of the picture plane further than most of their European counterparts, with works on the cusp of two and three dimensionality.

In Camargo’s arresting Relief No. 271, the optical effect is created by a sensuous rhythmic play of light and shadow across its otherwise pure, monochromatic surface. The organic, crystal-like pattern of wooden cylinders thus generates a ‘vibrating wall’ effect depending on the viewer’s standpoint - which is pushed even further in Carlos Cruz-Diez’s wonderful Physichromie No. 657. As it is implied from the series’ title, Cruz-Diez’s Physichromies attempt to reveal the physicality of colour. Their structure of vertical plastic blades set against a colour-block background highlights the behaviours of different tones which vary according to the movement of the viewer and the intensity of ambient light. Thus, when walking past a Physichromie, one is under the impression that the work is not standing still but rather pulsates and undulates against the wall, in sync with the pace of the viewer.

Departing from the same animus but radically different in their execution, Victor Vasarely’s Silur and Geminorum are both early examples by one of the future masters of kinetic art, and consequently provide a rare glimpse into the genesis of optical art. Having achieved pure abstraction since 1947, Vasarely used rigorously designed and meticulously amalgamated shapes and fields of colour to trigger a retinal response.

The following four works lay testament to the deep mutual respect and multiple cross-influences between Europe and Latin America at the time of their production. Camargo and Cruz-Diez both worked in Paris, Vasarely spent some time in Venezuela for a monumental mural commissioned in 1954, his work was shown alongside examples from Cruz-Diez’s oeuvre in The Responsive Eye, and all had exhibitions at the Galerie Denise René in Paris the 1960s. Each providing a different response to the challenge of kinetics from an immobile surface, the works from this remarkably cohesive group reopen the dialogue and gives further insight into the intricate relationship between the contrasting strands of optical art.