Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV)

In July 1960, Hector García Miranda, Horacio García Rossi, Hugo Demarco, Julio Le Parc, Vera and François Molnár, François Morellet, Sergio Moyano, Servanes (Simone Revoil), Joël Stein, Francisco Sobrino, and Yvaral (Jean-Pierre Vasarely) founded the Centre de Recherche d’Art Visuel, a center for visual research where the artists could work together towards the realization of their common formal and theoretical goals. In the summer of 1960, the young artists rented a small garage in the Marais district of Paris, which provided them with a common meeting and exhibition space. The center was renamed Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in July 1961. From then on, the group members were García Rossi, Le Parc, Morellet, Sobrino, Stein, and Yvaral. The group disbanded in November 1968.

Exhib.: 1961, »Proposition sur le mouvement. Groupe de recherche d’Art Visuel. Framställningar Över Rörelsen«, Galerie Denise René, Paris. 1964, documenta 3, Kassel. 1965, »The Responsive Eye«, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Lit.: GRAV, “Assez de mystifications!,” brochure, Paris, 1961, later published in: GRAV (ed.), »Participation. À la recherche d’un nouveau spectateur. Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel«, exhib. cat., Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1968, p. 6. GRAV, “Transformer l’actuelle situation de l’art plastique,” brochure, Paris, 1961, later published in: GRAV and Galerie Denise René (eds.), »Groupe de recherche d’Art Visuel. Paris 1962«, exhib. cat., Maison des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1962.

[2010]