Jesus Rafael Soto - Ecriture bleu central, 1999 (detail)

Jesus Rafael Soto / Jesús Rafael Soto

Kinetic Art, Op Art

December 9, 2014

Thanks to the deep understanding of negative space and geometry, Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto became one of the pioneers of kinetic and op art. Throughout his career, the artist received many commissions to create work for public spaces and institutions, such as UNESCO and Chacaíto metro station in Caracas, and the Royal Bank of Toronto. Soto exhibited in Berlin, London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Today his works which sell in auctions for up to seven-figure sums, are part of several public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Fondazione Antonio y Carmela Calderara, Italy; Tate Museum, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and Fundación Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto, Venezuela.

Jesus Rafael Soto - Vibrations Metalliques, 1969
Jesus Rafael Soto - Vibrations Metalliques, 1969. Sculpture; 28 x 31 x 13 cm

Kinetic Art

Jesús Rafael Soto was born in 1923, in Ciudad Bolívar. He graduated from the Escuela de artes plásticas in Caracas in 1947 and soon after became a director of Escuela de bellas artes in Maracaibo. It was there that the artist first encountered the works of Mondrian and Malevich and decided to move to Paris in 1950. He exhibited his works at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles where he met experimental artists Yves Klein, Iris Clert, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Pol Bury.

In his early works, Soto was interested in introducing movement into his illusionistic paintings by means of repetition. The three-dimensional forms he created by using layered plexiglass shifted between the organic and geometrical forms. In 1955 together with the ZERO group, he took part in the now legendary exhibition Le Mouvement (The Movement) at Galerie Denise René, which launched the Kinetic art movement.

Jesus Rafael Soto - Mirroire d'Artiste, 2005
Jesus Rafael Soto - Mirroire d'Artiste, 2005. Glass and Silkscreened Plexiglas; 50.2 x 50.2 x 5.1 cm. Courtesy RoGallery

Jesús Rafael Soto's Penetrables

The 1960s marked the shift from gestural abstraction to a geometric idiom. Soto began creating large-scale kinetic installations using steel, nylon, and Perspex. For the artist, the viewer became the central figure whom he invites to walk around and through his works and observe the world around them. Soto said:

Today, the notion that there is mankind on one side and the world on the other has been superseded. We are not observers but constituent parts of a reality that we know to be teeming with living forces, many of them invisible.

Thus his first Penetrables constructed from nylon strands hanging from a metal frame were born in 1967. Numerous solo exhibitions followed where the artist transformed the gallery space into a kinetic installation that invited spectators into the environment that blurred the boundaries between illusion and reality.

Jesus Rafael Soto - Vibracion pura, 1960
Jesus Rafael Soto - Vibracion pura, 1960. Paint on coated masonite panel and metal rods; 100 x 50 x 25 cm. Courtesy Perrotin

Exhibitions 

Soto had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Signals Gallery in London (1965), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1969), and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1974). He was commissioned to create two murals for the UNESCO building in Paris and the installation for a Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas. In 1973 the museum of modern art in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela was named after the artist - Museo de arte moderno Jesús Soto. Jesús Rafael Soto passed away in 2005 in Paris.

Featured image: Jesús Rafael Soto - Ecriture bleu central, 1999 (detail). Paint on wood and metal, nylon. 81 9/10 × 119 7/10 in. 208 × 304 cm. Photo courtesy Perrotin


Download W.News app today and read everything you need to know about the art world on the go
button
Can We Help?

Have a question or a technical issue? Want to learn more about our services to art dealers? Let us know and you'll hear from us within the next 24 hours.