Ciudad Bolivar (Venezuela), 1923 – París (Francia), 2005
By Francisco Alambert
One of the greatest artists of the second half of the 20th century, Jesús Rafael Soto began by painting movie posters in his hometown until, between 1942 and 1947, he obtained a scholarship to attend the School of Fine Arts in Caracas. There, he met Carlos Cruz-Diez and Alejandro Otero. He served as director of the Julio Arraga School of Fine Arts in Maracaibo from 1947 to 1950 and then moved to Paris. His early works displayed the influence of Cézanne in their geometrized landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. In the French capital, he came into contact with the works of Malevich and Mondrian and began collaborating with Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely, and other artists associated with the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and the Galerie Denise René, evolving toward geometric abstraction.
Between 1951 and 1953, he created his first kinetic works, whose development was influenced by knowledge of twelve-tone music. From 1954 onward, he held exhibitions at the Galerie Denise René, forming a triad of Venezuelan kinetic artists alongside Otero and Cruz-Diez. By the late 1950s, also influenced by Duchamp, he created the first works with a vibratory effect and the series Esculturas, made of nylon threads, which formed a kinetic weave that combined and energized with the movement of the viewer. By the end of the 1960s, he produced the Penetrables, a work with which the viewer interacts and in which they immerse themselves.
His murals for the UNESCO building in Paris (1970) and for the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas (1974) were the starting point for several works that integrated kinetic art and architecture. From 1972, he alternated his residence between Paris and Caracas. In 1973, the Venezuelan government constructed the Museo de Arte Moderna de la Fundación Jesús Soto in his hometown, designed by Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva. In 1988, during the Seoul Olympics, his work Esfera virtual was installed in the Olympic Park of Sculptures.
Soto participated in five São Paulo Biennials in 1957, 1959, 1963 (when he won an award), 1994, and 1996—during the latter, his work was one of the public’s favorites—and in the Venice Biennale (1958-1960). He was awarded the David Bright Prize in Venice and the Grand Prize at the Second Cordoba Biennial, both in 1964. The Guggenheim Museum in New York held a retrospective of his work in 1974. He received the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, an honorary doctorate from the University of Oriente (Venezuela, 1978), and the Medal of Plastic Arts awarded by the Academy of Architecture of Paris (1989).
In the 1990s, his works continued to tour various museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura, Japan (1990); the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1993); the Kunsthalle in Cologne, Germany (1993); and MoMA in New York (1993). Soto passed away just a few months before a major exhibition of his works was set to open at the Cultural Center of the Bank of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in 2005.
