Photography by Carlos Cruz-Diez at Americas Society

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Los diablos de Yare, San Francisco de Yare, estado de Miranda, Venezuela, 1951. Image courtesy of the artist.

Americas Society (Council of the Americas)

presents

Within the Light Trap: Carlos Cruz-Diez in Black and White

February 4 - March 22

Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm

Curated by Gabriela Rangel and assisted by Christina De León

Venezuelan-born, Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez’s longstanding research in color has won him an international reputation as one of the most important figures of Latin American modernism.
Cruz-Diez’s empirical exploration of photography is further grounded on social preoccupations the artist developed in the 1940s, when he became aware of the rapid demographic and economic transformations caused by modernization in his native Venezuela.

Since then, he has documented everyday life rituals linked to the vernacular, such as local folklore festivities in rural communities and the viral emergence of shantytowns in Caracas. He has portrayed important intellectual figures linked to popular culture and music who were key interlocutors for him and his generation. Cruz-Diez’s interest on local popular culture through photography also laid a foundation for a number of realist paintings that conveyed social concerns he later redefined with the use of color as a participatory element. 

Americas Society (Visual Arts Gallery)
680 Park Avenue (between 68th and 69th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)