Optimax, like all of the artworks produced during the International Sculpture Symposium that took place in Mount Royal Park in 1964, is installed in the clearing that the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted called “the glades.” This abstract artwork is made of two elements. The trapezoid-shaped reinforced-concrete base, the façade of which slants backward, serves as a pedestal for a geometric limestone volume composed of two cubes resting on a triangular volume, which was originally red. The surface of each of these forms has been treated differently: whereas the cubes are textured, even rough, the triangle is smooth. The sculpture is in close relation to the topography: the base is perpendicular to the footpath on its edge and matches the slope of the terrain.

Eloul’s artwork was executed for the International Sculpture Symposium in Montréal (1964), the first time a symposium was held in North America. The goals of this concept, created a few years earlier in Europe, were to have artists create monumental sculptures in a context of encounters with the public and to provide public spaces with international-calibre artworks. Instigated by sculptor Robert Roussil, this symposium gathered 11 sculptors from nine countries and attracted more than 40,000 visitors. It was seen as one of the events that brought Québec into artistic and cultural modernity.