Certificate from Atelier Cruz-Diez (ref. 2016–03-18–5462) to follow this lot.

Exhibited: “Cruz-Diez - Guzman”, Galerie Kaare Berntsen, Oslo, Norway April - May 1968. Provenance: Private collection, Norway, until 1976–78. Acquired from the above. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark, from 1976–78. By descent from the above.

“When reflecting on color, my first thought was that, throughout history, 'making art' has always consisted of transposing a changing reality to a static support. One of mankind's most utopian dreams has always been to make time stand still. When painting relinquished its referential role and created its own autonomous pictorial space, it nonetheless remained static and two-dimensional; yet people kept talking about links between space and time. Those connections were nothing but ideas, they were not 'real'; they were, in fact, also transpositions, just like those in referential painting. So, if referring to reality has been a constant feature in art history, why not go straight to the heart of the matter and create works of art that are 'a reality in and of themselves'? Why not produce art that creates events, just as in real life? [...] Why not liberate color - transpositions eternal handmaiden - and help it find its own true expression? Up to what point might it be possible to separate color from its support and make it exist in space? Hove to give color total freedom beyond the traditional support of painting? A support capable of showing the constant mutation of color would have to be 'invented'. Along those lines, the structure of 'Physichromie' creates a trap for light in which color can change and be transformed. That phenomenon allowed me to move beyond Impressionism's mistaken attempt to re-create the constant mutations of the effects of light on the two-dimensional plane. That happy misstep in the history of painting was the stimulus for my own research”.

Carlos Cruz-Diez: “Four situations involving color: A conversation”, IN: Mari Carmen Ramírez & Héctor Olea: “Color in Space and Time. Cruz-Diez”, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston 2011, p. 96.