Aesthetics and Efficiency

In conjunction with the opening of the documentary exhibition The Weight of Form. The Graphic Design of Carlos Cruz-Diez (12 March — 11 June 2021), the Museo Reina Sofía organises a lecture by art historian Ariel Jiménez, the curator of the exhibition. The lecture will shed light on one of the artist’s most prolific but lesser-known sides: his output in the field of graphic design, where he played a key role in the development of Venezuela’s publishing industry.

Carlos Cruz-Diez’s career, in relation to his visual work and graphic design work, was characterised by a constant struggle to attain what he dubbed the “efficiency of the discourse”, an aspect often in opposition to the aesthetics, or at least conventional aesthetics, imparted in art schools. This strain is conspicuous in his graphic work, where the search for simple and efficient solutions, based on the ordered and symbiotic co-existence of form, colour and content, structured the main premise of his work as a designer.

Participants

Ariel Jiménez is a modern and contemporary art historian, museologist and curator. He has curated a broad number of exhibitions in centres in Venezuela, Latin America and the USA, and has worked with many public and private institutions in Venezuela, for instance the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art (1984–1986), the Eugenio Mendoza Foundation, Caracas (1989–1997), the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (1997–2011) and the Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art (2004–2006). He is currently an independent curator. His publications include monographs on Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alfredo Boulton, Jesús Soto, Alejandro Otero, Ferreira Gullar and Waltercio Caldas.