Text in which Julio Le Parc expresses his disagreement with the Denise René L’intrépide [Denise René: The Intrepid] title, because it refers to an exhibition in which the works were not made by the art-dealer but by the artists, who deserved recognition for having produced a (non-recognized) counterpoint to the North American Pop hegemony. It also points out that the show accentuates the falsehood of the official authorities’ appreciation, especially since the Centre Pompidou offered the entire decade of the 1960s as a block solely to North American Pop Art, as if it were a recognition of its link with the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and the commercial art galleries of the United States.

Julio Le Parc (1928) was born in the Province of Mendoza, in Argentina, and graduated in Buenos Aires. In 1955, he participated in the student movement that took over the country’s fine arts schools, and in 1958, Le Parc traveled to Paris on a scholarship. While there, between 1960 and 1968, he became part of the GRAV, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel [Experimental Visual Arts Research Group], which, in turn, participated in the Nouvelle Tendence [New Tendency] international movement. He later continued his visual research and production within the kinetic art movement. On many occasions, his positions on various issues from the point of view of a Latin American artist were accounted for.Since 1945, the Parisian art gallery Denise René has promoted abstraction, especially in its geometric and kinetic aspects. This is the text that Le Parc wanted to accompany the works presented at the Denise René L’intrépide exhibition, which took place in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris between April 4 and June 4, 2001. This document has been selected because it acts as evidence of the desire to sustain a critical posture when it came to the claims posed by the curatorial script regarding the role played by Denise René in promoting the art.Note that the exhibition was also presented at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria [Grand Canary Island], between September 18 and November 18, 2001, albeit with another title: El arte abstracto y la Galería Denise René [Abstract Art and the Denise René Gallery].