Julio Le Parc, artist of light and movement, dies

A world-renowned figure in optical and kinetic art, the Argentine artist passed away in Paris at the age of 97
Argentine Julio Le Parc, a world-renowned figure in optical and kinetic art, died this Saturday at the age of 97 in Paris, the city where he lived. A pioneer of artistic experimentation with light, color, and movement, Le Parc became one of the best-known and most influential Argentine artists. Although his health deteriorated rapidly in the last month, his son Yamil revealed that he was very excited about the retrospective exhibition of his work that will open at the Tate Gallery in London on June 11.

“With deep sorrow, we bid farewell to Julio Le Parc,” wrote Argentina’s Secretary of Culture, Leonardo Cifelli, on social media. His work “transformed contemporary art,” added Cifelli, who described Le Parc as “a symbol of Argentine creativity projected onto the world stage.”

Le Parc was born in 1928 in Palmira, in the province of Mendoza, into a humble family. The son of a seamstress and a railway worker, his life changed when he went to study in Buenos Aires and discovered an unknown world that he never left. He began to alternate various jobs with his studies at the School of Fine Arts, and during this formative period, he was taught by Lucio Fontana, the founder of Spatialism.

Thanks to a scholarship, he traveled to Paris in 1958, where he settled. He was still a newcomer when he participated in the founding of G.R.A.V. (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel), an artistic collective in which colleagues such as the Spanish sculptor Francisco Sobrino and the Argentine painter Hugo Demarco also collaborated. These were the first steps in an experimentation with light, color, and movement as creative materials that marked his entire artistic career. Along with Venezuelans Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Rafael Soto, Le Parc is considered one of the great masters of Latin American Op Art and Kinetic Art.