Image: Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago
Julio Le Parc’s ‘Serie 23 Nr. 14-2’ (1976) will be added to the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende’s collection exhibition ‘Del amor que mueve el sol y las otras estrellas’ on 5 September. Curated by Amalia Cross, the exhibition will include the work in tribute to the Argentine artist, who died recently.
Made in acrylic on canvas, ‘Serie 23 Nr. 14-2’ belongs to Le Parc’s ‘Surface couleur’ series. The painting was produced as an investigation into a spectrum of 14 colours arranged across a plane. Its gradations create a sensation of depth and visual instability, while concentric circles establish a connection with the form of a target. Le Parc also used that device in images linked to political movements at the end of the 1960s.
Caroll Yasky, curator and coordinator of the museum’s Collection area, said that the painting seeks, through play, to democratise aesthetic experience through the senses and bodily perception. Le Parc’s experimental works incorporated artificial illumination, specular effects, reflections and movement.
Le Parc (1928–2026) was born in Mendoza, Argentina, and moved to Paris in 1958 after receiving a scholarship from the French government. In 1960, he founded the Grupo de Investigación de Arte Visual (GRAV), through which he furthered research into public participation. His work explored movement, light, colour, perception and active participation.
The artist was involved with the Museo de la Solidaridad during its Resistance period, from 1975 to 1990. Alongside donating work to the museum, he made his workshop-factory in Cachan, south of Paris, available for the storage of works donated to the Museo Internacional de la Resistencia Salvador Allende by French, Latin American and European artists during the museum’s years in exile.
That connection began in 1975, when Miria Contreras visited Le Parc with a letter of introduction signed by the Cuban artist Mariano Rodríguez. Le Parc helped to compile lists of artists living in Paris and contributed to mobilising the networks of Jeune Peinture, as well as artists associated with Nueva Figuración and Figuración Narrativa.
Isabel Ropert and Pilar Fontecilla collected the works assembled in Paris and transported them to the Cachan workshop. The workshop continued in this capacity for decades; the final group of works from the French collection that remained in France was transferred to Chile in 2006.
In 1972, Le Parc cofounded Grupo Denuncia with Gontran Guanaes Netto, José Gamarra and Alejandro Marcos. The group conducted actions intended to make visible human-rights violations under Latin American dictatorships, including the installation ‘Sala oscura de tortura’.
