Reflection on Color

The seminal writing of Carlos Cruz-Diez, best known for his experiential works exploring color and its properties

Trained as a painter, Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923–2019) developed a conceptual platform for his work based on optical and chromatic phenomena, which led him to take a revolutionary new approach to his work beginning in 1959. Building on the chromatic experiments of figures like Sir Isaac Newton, the impressionists, and Josef Albers, Cruz-Diez explored the perception of color as an autonomous reality evolving in space and time, unaided by form or support, in a perpetual present.

Originally published in Spanish in 1989, Reflection on Color details Cruz-Diez’s theories of color and traces the aesthetic and conceptual evolution of his practice. Though the book was translated into English in Cruz-Diez’s lifetime, it never saw broad distribution. In this text, Cruz-Diez explores eight of his major investigations into color phenomena, including his signature Physichromie and Chromosaturation series. Generously illustrated with examples of Cruz-Diez’s work, this important text introduces Cruz-Diez’s writing and thinking to a new generation of artists and scholars.