Julio Le Parc dies at 97, leaving behind a moving vision of art

A life that made art participatory

Julio Le Parc, the Argentine pioneer of kinetic and op art, died in Paris on May 30 at the age of 97 after a progressive decline in health, marking the end of a career that redefined how audiences experience art. He spent a lifetime insisting that art should not happen to people, but with them — a belief that shaped his radical, viewer-driven practice. His son, Yamil Le Parc, confirmed the news to La Nación while travelling from London, where he had been overseeing the installation of his father’s work, to Paris, where Le Parc had been hospitalised for two days. “He fought until the end,” he said. “He was so excited about that show. He wanted to go.” The show — a major retrospective at Tate Modern opening June 11 — will now open without him.

The man who made art move

Born on September 23, 1928, in Palmira, Mendoza, Le Parc built a career spanning more than seven decades, defined by experiments with light, movement and perception. After settling in France in 1958, he became a central figure in the Paris art scene of the 1960s. As co-founder of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), he rejected the idea of the artist as a solitary genius, instead foregrounding collective experience and viewer engagement. His international breakthrough came in 1966, when he won the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale. His installations — using mirrors, motors and shifting light — disrupted passive viewing, turning audiences into active participants. “I was attacking the static nature of artworks — and the idea of the extraordinary artist,” he said, articulating a philosophy rooted in accessibility and democratic engagement.

A retrospective he would not see

The Tate Modern exhibition, organised in close collaboration with Le Parc, brings together more than 60 works spanning the late 1950s to the 2020s, including immersive installations, luminous sculptures and large-scale geometric paintings. It now carries the weight of a final statement on his influence, underscoring how he transformed the role of the viewer in contemporary art. Tributes poured in across Argentina and beyond, with Buenos Aires’ MALBA museum calling him an “undisputed master,” while artist Marta Minujín described him as “a great who broke with everything.” Musicians such as Fito Páez and Bizarrap also paid homage, reflecting his cultural reach beyond the visual arts.

Still making art at 97

Le Parc remained creatively active until the end. In 2019, he transformed Buenos Aires’ Obelisco into a shifting canvas of light through projection mapping, and in 2021, he intervened on the façade of the Maison Hermès in Tokyo with La Larga Marcha. His works are held in major collections including MoMA, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Tate — institutions that now hold the legacy of an artist who refused stillness. His death marks the end of one of the most influential careers in contemporary art, yet his work resists closure: the retrospective will open, the lights will continue to shift, and the viewer will still complete the work. That was always the point.