“The project of my life included painting and family at the same time” said Cruz-Diez in his memoirs Vivir en arte, recuerdos de lo que me acuerdo. As an artist, a husband, a father and a grandfather, Cruz-Diez fully accomplished his project. Guided by his example and affection, his family works with a team of professionals to manage his legacy and promote, conserve and promulgate Maestro’s work and ideas.
Cruz-Diez Foundation
The Cruz-Diez Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster the study and appreciation of Carlos Cruz-Diez’s life and work.
Created in Houston in 2005 at the artist and his family’s initiative, the Cruz-Diez Foundation ensures the continued existence and the transmission of Cruz-Diez’s legacy through research, exhibitions, and educational programs worldwide.
The activities of the Cruz-Diez Foundation are diverse and globally reaching and stem from its mission to preserve Cruz-Diez’s artworks, maintain the integrity of his image, and convey official information about the artist. In 2015, we created the Learning Lab with the aim of providing educational tools for anyone interested in art, color and the enjoyment of the artwork of Cruz-Diez. To know more about the Cruz-Diez Foundation, please consult our brochure.
The Studios
Atelier Cruz-Diez Paris
Over forty years after Carlos Cruz-Diez’s arrival in Paris, the Atelier Cruz-Diez continues to carry out the management, diffusion and conservation of the artist's work. In its Parisian premises, the Atelier Cruz-Diez has gathered a team of specialists in conservation, logistics, restoration of artworks, archives and records administration, communication and project management; experienced professionals who dedicate themselves to "the art of making Art".
Carlos Cruz-Diez took up permanent residence in Paris in the fall of 1960. Very soon he set up his studio, a place of life and work, but also a place of exchange and discussion. Among the artists of the time, the musical parties and the debates on art, philosophy, music, literature and even politics are still remembered. Following the tradition of the great masters of the 17th century, the artist's work team has always been made up of his family and numerous assistants, mostly young artists, art students and professionals from different specialties.
I could never have made all those works on my own. I need a team in which each member performs a very specific task that contributes something to the final assembly. All the machines and tools I use and invent have the same purpose: to preserve my freedom and enable me to fully dedicate myself to invention.
CRUZ-DIEZ
Articruz
Articruz is one of Carlos Cruz-Diez' studios, dedicated to the conservation and restoration of the artist's works, as well as to the management of the region's archive through its documentation center.
Articruz was created in 2009 in Panama City, expanding the production of Cruz-Diez’s Caracas workshop while maintaining the knowledge and experience acquired by the family in a lifetime dedicated to art. Along with the Atelier Cruz-Diez Paris, Articruz represents the artist with specialists of the art world in important events of the international cultural agenda, such as contemporary art fairs and exhibitions, as well as managing group and solo exhibitions of the artist.
Cruz-Diez Documentation Center
The Cruz-Diez Documentation Center is dedicated to the conservation, study and promotion of the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez and of kinetic art in general. The center was born out of the patience, affection and dedication of the women of the artist's family.
In Cruz-Diez’s early childhood, María Lander de Cruz, his grandmother, and Mariana Diez de Cruz, his mother, began to keep objects, drawings and school books, as if they already knew at that time the importance that these items would have later.
As Carlos grew up, Doña Mariana continued to collect documents that showed the first signs of her son's early vocation for drawing, painting, and comic strips.
Later, Mirtha Delgado, Carlos' life partner, would complement and strengthen Mariana’s work. Relentlessly, she pursued the work started by her mother-in-law by nurturing the documentation center with the evolving history of Carlos Cruz-Diez' artistic career, as well as his prolific production in the fields of graphic design and photography.
Under Mirtha's careful supervision, the archives have continued to expand significantly with catalogs and other documents about Cruz-Diez's professional activities as an artist, photographer and graphic designer since the 1960s, when he moved to France. Mirtha has added to the archive a multitude of graphic and printed documents, photographs, magazines, programs and testimonies of the myriad of cultural events organized by other artists. At the time, Paris was a hive of cultural activities, where various artists and intellectuals, painters, poets, writers, from different backgrounds, confronted their ideas and proposals.
Since 2004, when Mirtha passed away, the artist's archives have been handed over to her daughter Adriana and her daughters-in-law Silviana and Maria Elena, who have continued to maintain the documentation center and have undertaken work to ensure the proper physical and digital preservation of the documents.
The Cruz-Diez documentation center contains memories. These memories are like maps that allow us to travel in time and understand the past by listening to its voices, to situate ourselves in the present and project ourselves into the future.
