In 1959, Cruz-Diez began work on the acclaimed Physical Colors series, which spans the artist's career and carries the fruits of his lifelong research into the autonomy and physical properties of color. From Georges Seurat's pointillism to Josef Albers' color theories, the artist drew on a wide range of European modernist artistic expressions and research to create the series, exploring the physical effects of color on the viewer and encouraging the viewer to experience the transformation of color.