Prada Tribute to Cruz-Diez
Prada wears art. International tribute to Cruz-Diez
The famous brand, Prada, pays an international tribute to Carlos Cruz-Diez. The new façades of the Prada retail stores have been inspired by Cruz-Diez’s Physichromies. The ones that stand out most are located in London (UK), Hong Kong, Qingdao, Guangdong, Hei Longjiang, Taiyuan, Shenyang and Shanghai (China); Nagoya (Japan); Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Kaohsiung (Taiwan) and Singapore. The installed modules produce a change in the color spectrum depending on the intensity of the light and the movement of the observers. Every boutique’s entrance displays metal plaques in honour of Carlos Cruz-Diez and the visitors are given an informative brochure about the artist’s life and work.
Cruz-Diez’s work has been well known and appreciated in Asia for more than twenty years. In South Korea in 1988 the Physichromie Double Face was installed in the Olympic Park, for the Olympic Games organized in Seoul that same year, and in 2001 the Spirale Virtuelle was installed in the Korean Folk village in the city of Suwon-si. His most recent exhibitions have been held in the Dream Forest Art Center at the Sang Sang Tok Tok Gallery in Seoul (2011) and at the Jeonbuk Art Museum (2012).
In China, the work of Cruz-Diez awoke great interest in 2010, where the exhibition Environment Chromatic-Interférences. Interactive Space by Carlos Cruz-Diez, took place in the Guandong Museum of Art in the city of Guangzhou. In 2012, the exhibitions of Cruz-Diez in that country, have been held in the Ningbo Museum of Art in Ningbo, Zhejiang; in the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum in the Xuan Wu Qu District, Nanjing; and the most recent one in the He Nan Art Museum in Zhengzhou.
Prada’s interest in Cruz-Diez’s work goes back to 2008, when Patrizio Bertelli, president of Prada, together with the brand’s architect Roberto Baciocchi, visited Carlos Cruz-Diez in his Atelier also known as La Boucherie, in Paris. It was during this encounter that the idea of realizing a tribute to the artist arose, aiming those countries where Prada and Cruz-Diez have successfully introduced themselves, especially in the main cities of the Asian continent, where the aforementioned retail stores are located.
