Julio Le Parc is the kind of guy who flips a coin to decide whether or not to have a retrospective of his life’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
That’s a true story. And he didn’t do the retrospective.
Born in 1928 in Mendoza, Argentina, Le Parc knew he was an artist by the time he was thirteen years old. He studied at the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte and then promptly left Argentina for Paris in 1958, never looking back. He was kind of a jerk about it actually because he didn’t speak to his family for eight years. Not a great way to thank your mother for pushing you out of her body and giving you life, but whatevs.
Ever since his Argentina days, Le Parc was super into Kinetic Art, but he may or may not have been a more talented painter. He won the Golden Lion at the 1966 Venice Biennale for painting and showed his work around the world. But his anti-establishment senses began to tingle, so he let it all go for art that both moves and moves him. He invested his time in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, a collective he started in 1960. They were called G.R.A.V. for short. Things got a little dicey in Paris in May of 1968 though and a protest of American-style capitalism got Le Parc exiled from France. He was let back in a few months later, but it was all very dramatic.
Now at 88 years of age, Le Parc is still making art in Paris and has finally given in to having a retrospective of his work, which took place in Miami in 2016. He also collaborated on some scarves for Hermes so apparently his whole anti-establishment belief system is a thing of the past.
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