Kinetic artist Julio Le Parc considers the work of Gontran [Guanaes] Netto, from Paris, the city where he resides. He begins with an analysis of a context in which artists seek individual recognition, which in Le Parc’s view is a situation that reflects a social system based on the dominant and the dominated, and is characterized by intense competition. Le Parc claims that Netto’s work directly opposes that state of affairs. Due to his sense of humanity, his work as well as his actions shows solidarity with those who struggle and suffer. He understands that if an artist longs for success, he must not shut himself away in a small world of strictly aesthetic concerns. While he is fully aware of the insidious way the capitalist system takes hold in all realms, Le Parc believes that opposition to the system can take shape within the art world. On these grounds, he considers Netto’s work a condemnation of repression in Latin America. Similarly, as an activist, Netto has signed petitions, participated in debates, and helped form collectives. Netto and his work must be analyzed in political terms since he operates on the basis of the certainty that struggle exists. In Le Parc’s view, a character like Gontran Netto is uncommon in the art world.

Argentine artist Julio Le Parc (b. 1928) and his Brazilian colleague Gontran [Guanaes] Netto (b. 1933) were friends and fellow participants in a number of activities when they were both in Paris. Both were members of Grupo Denúncia, a collective that also included Argentine artist Alejandro Marcos and Uruguayan artist Jose Gamarra. The aim of Grupo Denúncia was to stand up against the censorship, repression, and torture carried out by the dictatorships in their home countries and in other countries in Latin America during an extremely difficult period. The Paris-based group produced the seven black paintings included in the Sala Escura da Tortura (1972); at that event, the paintings were installed in a twenty-eight-square-meter gallery and illuminated by dim light. The images were produced in response to the experience of Tito de Alencar (1945–1974), a monk of the Dominican order who was tortured during the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–85). Pursuant to his violent death at the hands of the police, the monk became a symbol of human rights in his country. [For further information on the Grupo Denuncia, see the document “Informe del Grupo de artistas latinoamericanos firmantes del llamamiento residentes en París, [1972], París, Francia”, at the ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 794123)].

Originally from the outskirts of the city of Mendoza in western Argentina, Julio Le Parc (b. 1928) earned his undergraduate degree in Buenos Aires, where in 1955, he participated in the student movement that ended in the closing of local art academies. In 1958, owing to a fellowship from the French government, Le Parc traveled to Paris where he would settle permanently. From 1960 to 1968—when he was immersed in the Kinetic art movement and the problems of visual perception and poetics for which he would be awarded first prize at the XXXIII Venice Biennale in 1966—he headed the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel [Visual Art Research Group], which in turn formed part of the international group called nt or nouvelles tendences. As dictatorships gradually took hold in South America, Le Parc, along with other artists in the French capital, participated in numerous protest movements active into the seventies. Indeed, in response to the events in his home region, Le Parc’s work experienced a radical turnaround as he eschewed the experimentalism that had characterized his production in the previous decade.