Background
Soto was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Bolivar, Venezuela, on June 5, 1923. He was the son of Emma Soto and Luis Garcia Parra, a violin player. Soto was the eldest of four children in the family.
1961
Caracas, Venezuela
Photo of Jesús Rafael Soto with the guitar.
1975
Jesús Rafael Soto, right, inside one of his signature Penetrables.
Jesús Rafael Soto in his later years.
Jesús Rafael Soto and his artwork.
Jesús Rafael Soto by Lothar Wolleh.
Jesús Rafael Soto with his artwork.
Jesús Soto.
Photo of Jesús Rafael Soto.
Portrait of Jesús Soto.
Order of Arts and Letters
Soto was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Bolivar, Venezuela, on June 5, 1923. He was the son of Emma Soto and Luis Garcia Parra, a violin player. Soto was the eldest of four children in the family.
From a very young age, Jesús Soto was extremely taken with art. While still a primary school student, he did everything to help support his family anyway he could. When he was about twelve, Soto started to learn the guitar. Around this time he also began recreating famous paintings he found in magazines, books and almanacs.
At the age of sixteen, Soto began to create and paint posters for the cinemas in Ciudad Bolivar. After he painted posters, he received a scholarship from the Guyana regional authority to study at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas from 1942 to 1947.
Jesús Soto took classes in "pure art" as well as the "training course for instructors in art education history." One of Soto's professors, Antonio Edmundo Monsanto, the director of the school, taught many other Venezuelan artists, including Omar Carreño, Dora Hersen, Mateo Manaure, Narsico Deboug, Mercedes, Luis Guevara, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Pascal Navarro, Pardo and Alejandro Otero. Mansanto was important to many of these artists careers as he often brought in foreign magazines and books as well as many reproductions and engravings which served as a source of information and inspiration for his students. Soto completed his studies there, receiving his teacher’s diploma.
In 1951, Soto attended lectures by Léon Degand, entitled "From Figuration to Abstraction", at the Atelier d'Art Abstrait, in Paris.
In 1999, he received a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the University of Carabobo, Venezuela.
Soto was appointed the director of the Escuela de Artes Plasticas located in Maracaibo in 1947. This post he held until 1950. While working in the school, he came into contact with a group of surrealist students who were publishing in the local press. They encouraged him to take up a career as an artist.
In 1950 Jesús Soto received a grant that allowed him to travel to Paris. There he found a vibrant community of artists to actively engage with, associating with Yaacov Agam, Victor Vasarely, Jean Tinguely, and other artists connected with the Salon des Realités Nouvelles and the Galerie Denise René.
During his first years in Paris, the artist produced two-dimensional geometric and abstract paintings, however, he was continually looking for ways to take his work into the three dimensions. Soto collaborated with various artists on the Proyecto de Integración de las Artes in the Central University of Venezuela starting from 1952. They integrated avant-grade modern art with the university’s architecture.
Soto’s central artworks of the 1950s and 1960s were "geometric abstract paintings, using a limited and carefully selected array of flat colours." For example, his work Caroni was a minimalist arrangement of static geometric forms in unmodulated blue, silver, and black inks on white paper. Soto took part in Le Movement in 1955 which is one of the major exhibitions that helped launch his career in Kinetic Art.
By the 1960s, Jesús Soto was exclusively working with lines and movement having abandoned colour. He began to experiment with kinetic and linear construction in 1965. He used new materials of different varieties such as nylon, steel, perspex, and industrial paint. He created the so-called Penetrables. They were interactive sculptures which consisted of metal and plastic. He made over 25 Penetrables during the span of his career. It has been said of Soto’s art that it is inseparable from the interaction that it has with the viewer.
The Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art was inaugurated in 1973 in Ciudad Bolívar, holding a collection of Soto's artworks. The Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva designed the building for the museum and the Italian op artist Getulio Alviani was called to direct it. Unlike other art galleries, some of the exhibits at the museum were wired to the electricity supply so that they can move.
Soto exhibited widely in Europe, especially from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, when he was at the peak of his career. His works were shown in many public places, including the hall of the UNESCO building in Paris in 1969 and the Forum of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1987.
The artist remained active into the 21st century. In 2001 he was a participant of the SITE Santa Fe biennial.
Untitled
(From the Jai Alai Series.)
La Boite de Villanueva (Edition Denise René)
Escritura Rosa Panta
Progresion Rosa
Anello Edition Denise René
Vibration Blanche
Untitled
Bleu Vertical
Incline Blue et Noire
La courve bleue
Petite Losange Jaune
Petite Vibration Hannover - Edition Kestner
Azul y Negro
Cube with Ambigous Space
Esfera Theospacio
Soto’s sculptures and environments often play with the juxtaposition of solid and void, deliberately unsettling the act of viewing by blurring the distinction between reality and illusion.
Also, Soto was interested in the concept of perception, and this was demonstrated through some of his works, which require interaction with the viewer.
Quotations:
"Artistic creation is a force which should preferably be directed towards the exploration of space, of the universe, of the infinite realities which surround us, but of which we are hardly conscious."
"For me, Cubism was an exercise in construction, in the ordering a planes, a tool, that helped me to translate the tropical light."
Soto was a member of Zero group.