Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action

Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action is on at Tate Modern from 8 June 2026 to 3 May 2027, in the George Economou Gallery on Level 4 of the Blavatnik Building. It's a major retrospective of the Argentine artist, with over 60 works on display. It's also his first solo show at the Tate, and it comes with a bit of a heavy heart: Le Parc died at 97, just eight days before it opened.

If you're not familiar with him, Le Parc was a modern master of kinetic and optical art. Back in 1960, he co-founded GRAV (le Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel) in Paris alongside François Molnar, François Morellet, Francisco Sobrino and Jean-Piper Yvaral, and he ended up as the collective's primary theorist. From 1959, he started treating light as a sculptural medium in its own right, working with reflection, refraction and vibration. He also developed a rule-based approach to colour, combining fourteen hues in mathematically calculated patterns.

One thing he was always clear about was that a work isn't finished until the visitor steps inside it, so this is the kind of show you're meant to move through rather than just look at from a distance. He also had a lifelong streak of rejecting the spotlight. When he was offered his first major Paris gallery show, he let his eight-year-old son flip a coin to decide whether to take it, and then he turned it down.

The exhibition spans seven decades of work, from the late 1950s right through to the 2020s, so it follows him from those early GRAV days through to his most recent pieces. Tickets are £15, free for Members, £13 for Concessions and £5 for Tate Collective.