20th-21st Century. Argentinian

Julio Le Parc is one of the seminal exponents of Kinetic Art and . In his early formative years, he outrightly rejected the traditional art education system, calling for its complete transformation and for the emergence of a new concept of the artwork. Throughout his career Le Parc has championed the creation of a universal art that would connect with everybody, unfettered from categories of active-creator and passive-spectator, instead conceiving the artwork as the outcome of an interaction between the two.

Julio Le Parc was born in 1928 in Mendoza. In 1942 he moved with his mother and siblings to Buenos Aires, where he worked at a leather goods factory while at once taking drawing lessons. A year later he enrolled at the Manuel Belgrano School to prepare his entrance exam for the National School of Fine Arts, where he enrolled in 1943. Amidst the otherwise traditional teaching methods at the school, Le Parc was stimulated by the lessons given by the artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) who defended a search for alternatives to academic learning. In 1947, deeply disappointed with the system, Le Parc quit the school, after which he travelled around the country for some time, taking an active role in the movements that advocated changes in art teaching. In 1954 he decided to take the exam to enter the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes. Thus, in 1955, he returned to formal academic teaching but he never relinquished his ambition to completely overhaul the system.

In 1958, after attending an exhibition by Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) in Buenos Aires, Le Parc decided to move to Paris thanks to a grant from the French Cultural Service. The experience proved pivotal for his work, both in conceptual and practical terms. In Paris he became familiar with the Kinetic artists, and began what would become a lasting relationship with Galerie Denise René. In Paris, Le Parc also re-encountered many fellow art school students from Buenos Aires, including the Spaniard Francisco Sobrino (1932-2014), with whom he founded GRAV (Grupo de Investigación de Arte Visual) in 1960. Disbanded in 1968, this artists’ group focused on visual perception as influenced by movement, light refraction and vibration, and defended collaborative work and the democratisation of art, which he believed should be accessible to everybody instead of been enjoyed only by a few.

Le Parc’s participation at the 33rd Venice Biennale (1966), representing Argentina, was a turning point in his career. He won the event’s International Painting Prize, which brought with it recognition from critics and public alike. In 1967 Le Parc received an award from France’s Ministry of Culture, presented by the minister of the time, André Malraux.

Le Parc’s works have been seen in countless exhibitions, in Argentina and internationally, and are also included in important collections, like Museo de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York or the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.