Jesús Rafael Soto

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Jesús Rafael Soto (June 5, 1923 in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela - January 14, 2005 in Paris, France) was a Venezuelan artist. He was a sculptor and painter and is most famous for his op art works.

He was trained in Venezuela, and his early influences were Cubism, Cézanne and Mondrian.Soto began his artistic career painting cinema posters in his native city. Soto directed the Escuela de Artes Plasticas in Maracaibo from 1947 to 1950, when he left for Paris and began associating with Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely, and other artists connected with the Salon des Realites Nouvelles and the Galerie Denise Rene. He became world-famous as a kinetic sculptor.

Soto is particularly well known for his penetrables, interactive sculptures which consist of square arrays of thin, dangling tubes through which observers can walk. It has been said of Soto's art that it is inseparable from the viewer; it can only stand completed in the illusion perceived by the mind as a result of observing the piece.

From 1970 until the early 1990s, Soto's works appeared in places such as the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York City, as well as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. [1]

Jesús Rafael Soto is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

In 1973, the "Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art" opened in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela with a collection of his work - a large number of the exhibits are wired to the electricity supply so that they can move . The Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva designed the building for the museum.

Some of Soto's work adorns the ceiling of the main hall of Caracas' arts centre, the Teatro Teresa Carreño.

[edit] Reference

Organization of American States (OAS)

Artist's Official Website: http://www.jr-soto.com