Tate Modern exhibition pays tribute to Julio Le Parc, shortly after death

London's Tate Modern, one of the world's leading contemporary art museums, will open an exhibition dedicated to artist Julio Le Parc on June 11, less than two weeks after his death at the age of 97.

Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action. is the first major retrospective of the Argentine artist to be staged by a British museum. Le Parc was one of the leading figures of 20th-century kinetic and optical art and a pioneer in the use of light, movement and audience participation.

The exhibition brings together 75 works by the artist, including one created specifically for the retrospective, and serves as a posthumous tribute to Le Parc.

"It is a tribute. He asked for a poem he wrote a few years ago about the end of his life to be included. Now, after his death, that poem takes on a different significance within the exhibition, almost as a farewell," said the show's curator, Italian-born art expert Val Ravaglia.

The artist died just over a week ago in Paris following a gradual decline in health in recent years due to his advanced age, which had increasingly distanced him from public life.

Ravaglia, who has worked at Tate Modern for the past 14 years, said Le Parc had hoped to attend the exhibition opening despite his fragile health.

"He was trying to book his Eurostar ticket," said Ravaglia, referring to the rail service linking Paris and London.

‘Extremely prolific’

Almost all of the more than 70 works featured in the exhibition come directly from the artist's studio.

"Julio was extremely prolific and often recreated works over time, so even pieces held by museums exist in other versions that he kept himself," Ravaglia said.

Le Parc, who was born in September 1928 in Mendoza Province, lived in Cachan, on the southern outskirts of Paris, after settling in the French capital in 1958.

Despite his age, he remained in almost constant contact with those organising the retrospective until his death.

"He was constantly sending us suggestions about the installation," the curator said.

Ravaglia noted that Tate Modern recognised the significance of Le Parc's work early on, acquiring pieces by the Argentine artist in the 1970s.

"At the height of kinetic art and other emerging movements, Tate's curators became interested in these new trends and acquired works by artists who were largely based in France and associated with the Nouvelle Tendance movement. Julio Le Parc's works were among them," she said.

Le Parc's first major retrospective took place in the German city of Düsseldorf in 1972. It was followed by exhibitions in several Argentine cities in 1999, Paris in 2013, Miami in 2016 and Buenos Aires in 2019.

Third exhibition in London

Le Parc first appeared in London in 1970 as part of the group exhibition Kinetics at the Hayward Gallery, a show dedicated to kinetic art.

His first solo exhibition in the British capital followed in 2014 at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, preceding the current retrospective at Tate Modern.

"This exhibition, presented at Tate Modern, includes some of my earliest works, created in 1959," the artist wrote in the exhibition catalogue before his death.

The works, he added, "reveal the central concern that shortly afterwards led to the creation of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in 1960 by François Morellet, Joël Stein, Horacio García Rossi, Jean-Pierre Yvaral, Francisco Sobrino and myself: the need to analyse our position as young artists in a society that imposed rules and limitations on artistic practice."

"It is a shame that he is not even better known, given the importance of his work, particularly in the development of installation art over the years," Ravaglia said.

"Today there is a great deal of discussion about immersive and interactive art, and Le Parc was one of the artists who laid the foundations for the way art is conceived in direct relation to the viewer," she added.