Maurice Meilleur
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_Julio Le Parc, Mutación de formas (1959)
Reconstruction and animation of Julio Le Parc’s Mutación de formas
 The early work of the Argentine artist Julio Le Parc (1928–2026) used systematic transformations of simple geometric forms in a way that implied motion. In this print from his Mutación series, reading the elements left to right: the balance of the blue to red wedges reverses itself in nine steps, then returns to the starting balance in the same number of steps. Around the edges of the field, where the starting and stopping ratios of the blue and red parts of the circle are the most extreme, each row/column step is 30° of arc and the transformation is most pronouced. Towards the center, the ratios are less extreme, the offsets get smaller; at the center the transformation is hardly perceptible.

The phase of the transformation for each leftmost element is offset by one full step, such that by the last of ten rows the element starts midway through the process and ends at the starting balance. I added rotation and reversal in the animation to put every element through each step.

Le Parc’s later work moved explicitly into kinetic and light sculpture. Here’s the original of this print:
Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, © Julio Le Parc