ISLAA is proud to be among the supporters of the first solo exhibition in a New York museum of Argentine artist Julio Le Parc (born 1928) at The Met Breuer. The show celebrates the artist’s extraordinary gift to The Met of 24 works and also marks the occasion of the artist’s 90th birthday. Featuring over 50 works, Julio Le Parc 1959 presents a substantial, never-before-seen selection of gouaches from one of the most prolific and transformative years in the artist’s career.
Born in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1928, Le Parc studied under Lucio Fontana during the 1940s and engaged with abstract avant-garde movements in Buenos Aires. In 1958, Le Parc moved to Paris, where his encounter with Op artists, such as Victor Vasarely, had an important influence on his art. The series of gouaches Le Parc started that year—intimate yet methodic studies of form and color—illuminates his interest in developing geometric abstraction by incorporating movement through variations, sequences, and progressions. This work anticipates his founding role in Kinetic art during the 1960s, when he made paintings and sculptures with movable parts by incorporating mirrors, motors, and electric light. Aiming to make art more accessible and politically relevant, Le Parc also experimented with projected lights in darkened rooms, adding a sense of playfulness and encouraging viewer participation. To represent this achievement, the show also includes the kinetic painting Form in Contortion over Weft (1966) and the immersive installation Continual Light Cylinder (1962/2018).
Julio Le Parc 1959 is curated by Iria Candela, Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met.
The exhibition is made possible by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Tony Bechara, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), and the Latin American Art Initiative of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Julio Le Parc (b. 1928, Mendoza, Argentina) is one of the most renowned figures of Op art and Kinetic art. He studied at the National University of the Arts in Argentina, where he was first interested in the relationships between light and form. In 1958 he travelled to Paris where he met artists such as Victor Vasarely and other important representatives of Kinetic art. From them, Le Parc extracted not only its formal proposals regarding movement, but also its political implications, such implications derived into collective practices of the “Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel” (GRAV), of which he was a founding member. The collective emphasized anonymity and the participation of spectators through the application of industrial, mechanical, and kinetic techniques alike. He participated in the “Atelier Populaire” during May 68 in France, as well as in various avant-garde, radical publications, anchoring his production – always close to Kineticism – in a social and political commitment that conceives spectators no longer as participants in the work, but as co-authors of it.
Iria Candela is the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She joined the Met’s Modern and Contemporary Art Department in 2014, following her previous role as curator of international art at Tate Modern, London, where she co-organized exhibitions such asMalevich(2014),Mira Schendel(2013),Gabriel Orozco(2011), andVan Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde(2010). Candela received her PhD from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and her MA from Columbia University. Her research interests embrace transnational projects that offer new perspectives on modern and contemporary art. At the Met, she curated the retrospectivesLygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms(2017) andLucio Fontana: On the Threshold(2019), contributing essays to the accompanying catalogues. She also curated the exhibitionLe Parc 1959(2018) and organizedMarisol: Self-Portrait Looking at the Last Supper(2014) and the Roof Garden CommissionHéctor Zamora: Lattice Detour(2020).
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
