Exhibition by the 96-Year-Old Argentine Artist in Madrid

Julio Le Parc Conquers Time: “I am a person with a certain optimism”
At 96 years old, the notable Argentine artist presents the exhibition “In Motion” in a Madrid gallery. “My works reflect that. Being positive is also a form of resistance,” he states.
After more than three decades without a solo exhibition in Madrid, Julio Le Parc (Mendoza, 1928) returns with “In Motion,” an ambitious show at the Albarrán Bourdais gallery in the bohemian Chueca neighborhood. The exhibition, which can be visited until April 26, brings together more than twenty works spanning his output from the 1970s to the present, providing a comprehensive overview of the career of one of the greatest exponents of kinetic art and Op Art.

For Le Parc, 96, this exhibition is not just a retrospective, but an opportunity to continue challenging the viewer's perception. “Art doesn't have to be something passive. “I want the viewer to move, to participate, to discover,” he stated in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País Semanal.

The works selected for En movimiento include large-scale mobile structures, historical reliefs, and pictorial series that reflect his constant experimentation with light and color. The exhibition begins with Sphère bleu foncé (2013), an imposing 220 cm diameter structure composed of hundreds of semi-transparent blue pieces that transform the space through dynamic reflections. “Movement allows the work to never be the same.” It changes with the light, with the viewer's gaze, with time," explained the artist, who has lived in Paris since the 1960s and currently has limited mobility following a stroke he suffered in 2023.
Another key piece is Relief couleur (1973), a wood relief that harks back to his studies on perception that began in the 1960s. Also featured are the Ondes and Série 16 series, where Le Parc establishes strict limits on his color palette—reduced to fourteen colors, plus white, black, and gray—to explore the expressive potential of each hue.
One of the most special core pieces of the exhibition is the Alchimies series, begun in 1958 when the Mendoza-born artist was still living in Buenos Aires. In this exhibition, recent works engage with creations from the 1980s, bridging the gap between different stages of his production. "I've always been interested in the idea of transformation. Alchemy, as in these works, is a continuous process, a constant change,” Le Parc noted.
From Buenos Aires to Paris

Le Parc began his training in Buenos Aires, although without a clear path in art. “Being an artist wasn't on my mind. But my mother remembered that a teacher told her I drew well, and she went to ask at the Academy of Fine Arts,” he recounted in an extensive interview with the Sunday magazine of the newspaper El País. After passing the entrance exam, he recounts, he began his academic training but soon clashed with traditional methods.
His rebelliousness led him to Paris in 1958, after obtaining a scholarship from the French government. There he came into contact with optical and kinetic art, and was struck by the work of Victor Vasarely. “When I saw his exhibition in Buenos Aires, it changed my mind. In Paris, I went to see him with other young artists, and that's where it all began,” he recalled.

In the French capital, along with other Latin American artists, he founded the GRAV collective, a group dedicated to visual experimentation and interaction with the public. His research into movement and light led him to win the International Grand Prix for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1966. However, his political activism cost him expulsion from France in 1968 after supporting workers' strikes and designing anti-government posters. "I took that as something natural because of my principles and ideas," he said without nostalgia.
Read more