It is a sophisticated contraption.
The yellow or violet tones that are perceived from different angles do not exist in the small green, red, blue or black tiles of that colorful ring, a floor mural.
Optical effects –or “chromatic events”– were the hallmark in the work of Venezuelan Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923-París, 2019), and they manifest themselves once again in
Ring of Chromatic Induction,
the monumental posthumous gift of the master of kinetic art that was inaugurated last week in the square of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, in the heart of Bogotá.
The effect of walking on this mosaic of 408,000 pieces, made in the same French factory that produced those of his emblematic work at the Maiquetía airport, is dazzling.
Each small two-centimeter piece of glass is “perfect,” explains his eldest son, Carlos Cruz-Diez, on the other end of the phone, one of the guardians of his legacy.
"They are the same mosaics that we use at the Simón Bolívar airport," the Maiquetía terminal that serves Caracas, he confirms.
They come from the ancient factory in the city of Briare, in France, and correspond to the exact formulas of the colors that his father originally painted.
Each square is fired at 1200 degrees with tons of pressure, and the color is throughout the mass, so that it remains intact despite the passing of the years.
In Bogotá, they were put together as if it were a puzzle.
"Everything was in coordination with the
atelier
of master Carlos Cruz-Diez in Paris," says the current rector of the university, Carlos Sánchez Gaitán, standing from the square itself, with the hoop on his back.
The story of the brand new
Ring
–which uses the concept of chromatic induction created by Cruz-Díez in 1963– is long.
The artist visited the university since the nineties.
The donation of the work was formalized in May 2014, with detailed final plans.
The project was included in the France-Colombia cooperation program in 2017, since Cruz-Diez settled in Paris in the 1960s, and the numbered pieces arrived in Bogotá.
"The idea at the time was that when the students returned from the pandemic we would have the sculpture as a welcome," says the enthusiastic rector.
Precision was key for the long-awaited moment when, physically and metaphorically, the circle was closed.
Everything matched.
The work is made up of 408,000 squares of two-centimeter glass. Juan Carlos Zapata (EL PAÍS)
The work, which will be accompanied by exhibitions and an academic program on Cruz-Diez, is also an example of the fraternal relationship between the Venezuelan and Colombian people, Sánchez Gaitán points out.
The connection points between Caracas and Bogotá are multiplying.
Hand in hand with migration between two sister countries that share more than 2,200 kilometers of a porous border, Venezuelan cultural activity is becoming more and more palpable in Colombia, where nearly two million citizens of the neighboring country have already settled.
Art builds its bridges.
The colorful
Ring
in the middle of the square, a public space of 4,368 square meters that includes a building that has won the national architecture award, also crowns –pun intended– a remarkable 30-year urban renewal process.
It is located in the center of the Colombian capital, on the slopes of the eastern hills and just over a kilometer from the ascent to Monserrate –which on a sunny afternoon can remind you of El Ávila, the guardian hill of Caracas–.
From the first collective exhibition that included Cruz-Diez at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MamBo), in 1963, the link with Colombia began, recalls his son.
To evidence those bonds of affection, he recounts the friendship she had with Colombian artists Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar.
He speaks from Panama, where one of Cruz-Diez's workshops is located, before returning to Paris after passing through Bogotá.
There are also other workshops in Caracas and Miami, with a management that involves his children and grandchildren.
Many of Cruz-Diez's works occupy public spaces in cities on different continents.
“Street artists say that my dad is the pioneer of
street-art
”, with a participatory experience and not only contemplative, points out the son.
His first urban interventions in Caracas date back to 1975, and since then he has also made many in pedestrian crossings –including one in Barranquilla, in 1984–.
The floor mural is in the square of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, in the center of Bogotá. Juan Carlos Zapa (EL PAÍS)
Considered the last chromatic thinker, Cruz-Diez died in 2019 in Paris, at the age of 95.
Together with fellow Venezuelan Jesús Soto, he led the so-called kinetic school, a legacy that is preserved in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Tate Modern in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art. Houston Fine Arts.
His career included works such as
Additive color atmosphere
, which covers the floor of the Maiquetía international airport, or
Induction chromatique à double fréquence
, which covers a huge area in the Marlins' baseball stadium in Miami, Florida, among many others that often change depending on the direction of the light or the viewer's point of view.
The projects in Bogotá, Maiquetía or Miami coincide in making a different reading of the space, giving it a new life, "with a phenomenon of color that is generated", says Cruz-Diez Jr.
They are a delight and an illusion.
"My father's work is universal, it belongs to everyone of any nationality who enjoys it," it has no political content, explains Cruz-Diez, now in his seventies, who has worked since he was 21 in family workshops and is an executor of the many projects that were drawn.
"I can't invent, the artist is no longer here," he clarifies.
What he wanted was for people to own his creations.
"It is true that the airport became a symbol of the diaspora, hopefully a symbol of return," he concedes.
If Maiquetía's work has been the scene of farewells, Bogotá's must become one of encounters.
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