The Broad announced today that it will present a new work from Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Couleur Additive has been commissioned by The Broad as part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. 

Installation of the public artwork will take place on four crosswalks at the intersection of West Second Street and Grand Avenue from Sept. 1 through Sept. 3. The work can be experienced by the public beginning Sept. 5, 2017 and will be on view into 2018. As part of the installation, and in order to further deepen the project’s ties to the Grand Avenue arts community, high school students from the nearby Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts have been asked to participate in painting the work onto the crosswalks throughout the Labor Day weekend. Following the opening of Couleur Additive on Sept. 5, The Broad will host select programming throughout the duration of the installation that will highlight the concepts explored by this work, including educational workshops in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation’s Learning Lab. In addition, a series of didactic materials inside the museum will enrich the experience of the crosswalk intervention, presenting more about the artist and his work.

Born in Caracas in 1923, Carlos Cruz-Diez is a major protagonist in the field of Kinetic and Optical art. Since 1975, Cruz-Diez has applied his research on color by producing large-scale ephemeral interventions on crosswalks and walkways around the world, bringing art from inside a museum’s traditional walls out into the community. Through his use of crosswalks and walkways, the public becomes participants in and co-authors of the artworks as they interact with and move through them at various times of day. “A work of art in the public space is magical in that people take possession of and become fond of it,” said the artist.

His works present color as an autonomous reality that evolves in space and time, unaided by form or support, in a perpetual present.