Jesús-Rafael Soto (1995).png Photo by Pantalaskas – Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Facts about Jesús Rafael Soto


 

Jesus Rafael Soto was born on June 5, 1923. He was a Venezuelan op and kinetic artist, sculptor, and painter. His works can be found in the collections of the main museums of the world including Tate in London, Museum Ludwig in Germany, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Roma, and MoMA in New York. One of the main museums of art in Venezuela is in his hometown.

Rafael was the eldest of four children born to Emma Soto and Luis Garcia Parra. From a very young age, he took an interest in art and eventually picked up the guitar. As he got older he began recreating famous pieces of art that he found in various books, magazines, and almanacs.

Read more about another famous personality here. 

1. Inspiration In School

Ciudad Bolívar historical zone.jpg Photo by Venecon at English Wikipedia – Wikimedia Commons

When Rafael was 16 years old, he started his serious artistic career when he created and painted posters for the cinemas in Ciudad Bolivar. In 1938, Rafael participated in a student group affiliated with surrealist ideas and publish in the local journal some poems.

In 1942, Rafael received a scholarship to study artistic training at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas y Artes Aplicadas which translates to Plastic and Applied Arts School in Caracas. The director of the school, Antonio Edmundo Monsanto, was instrumental to Rafael’s career as well as other very important Venezuelan artists like Omar Carreno, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Mateo Manaure. 

Rafael often brought inspiration from foreign countries to his students, including the latest from the avant-garde, cubism. 

2. Influential Discoveries

Paul Klee by Hugo Erfurth, 1927.jpg Photo by Hugo Erfurth – Wikimedia Commons

After he graduated from the Plastic and Applied Arts School, he received a teaching degree and was then hired to be the director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Maracaibo from 1947 to 1950. While he taught there, he received a government grant to travel to France and settled in Paris.

During his time in France, Rafael discovered Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian’s work. Piet Mondrian suggested the idea of dynamizing neoplasticism, this added to his will to create a new sort of movement that would add to three-dimensional art in association with Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, and other artists.

3. Artistic Career

Rafael started out with painting post-impressionist works and later got interested in Cubism. After he got in touch with Malevich, Mondrian, and constructivists, Rafael started to experiment with optical phenomena and op art. Rafael then began to make art that was more than just pictures.

Rafael experimented with serial art in the 1950s. He achieved the reproduction of vibratory phenomena and the rupture of notions like composition and equilibrium. He moved to incorporate time and real movement through the treatment of the space. At the same time, he was a spectator moving in front of the work of art.

Rafael observed optical vibrational effects, time, and real movement were being incorporated. In his Desplazmiento de un transparente, he created a spatial effect on a plane surface that was later developed in a tridimensional war, superimposing two or more Plexiglas sheets, transparent but painted with straight or curved drawings that changed the way they were seen. This work was the response to the discovery, of the ambiguity of spatial perception.

4. Experimenting with Dematerialization of Form

In Estructuras cineticas de Elementos geometricos and Armonia transformable is added a new element that was relegated in his research. The real division of the plane that had previously undergone an unfolding is produced here, its structure already suggests true spatial dimension as a consequence of the equivalence of its obverse and its reverse.

The situation becomes more complex, due to the multiplication of different lines, colors, and directions.

5. Work in Space Plenitude

All of Rafael’s work answers to the same necessity of materializing his concept of the world as an impossible reality to measure on a human scale. His goal was to reveal those situations in all of their complex dimensions which was the impulse that fed his plastic research.

His take on the research was that the Penetrable is a kind of concretization of this plenitude in which I make people move and make them feel the body of space. He also believed that it was a way of materializing what existed into an immaterial state where one state wasn’t unreal but a reality.

6. Impact On Other Artists

Just like other Venezuelan artists from this time, Rafael and Carlos Cruz-Diez considered their works a response to what they felt the problems were in the art of their time. Their works are contributions that continue to enrich the world of art. They were both willing to contribute and put themselves in a more universal approach to art.

With Venezuela, this was a way for them to add what they felt was missing in the art of Latin America. It has been recorded that painting was an act of responding to the situation at hand in the mind of Rafael and Carlos. They saw their work as a direct rebuttal to the traditional view of art in Latin America.

7. His Works Confirmation of New Visual Order

1973. Agosto 25. Inauguración Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto de Ciudad Bolívar.jpg Photo by Oficina Central de Información de Venezuela (Periodo 1969-1974) – Wikimedia Commons

Some of Rafael’s works in architecture reflected how the preoccupation with searching for new ways of materializing the vibratory states added concern to approach human scale. In his Estructura Cinetica which was in 1957, the frames he drew on plexiglass became real elements. His works became real special objects that visitors are still able to penetrate.

By the time the 1950s came around, Soto had already structured the conceptual platform of his plastic language. Works like Escritura and Muro de Bruselas both from 1958 already contained all the elements that will be developed later.

8. Soto’s Collections

The Jesus Soto Museum of Modern Art was opened in 1973 in Cuidad Bolivar, Venezuela. Venezuelan architect Carlos Raul Villanueva designed the building for the museum and Italian op artist Getuilo Alviani was called to run it. The museum displays all of his works except the environmental integrations.

The only thing different about the gallery is that a large number of the exhibits are wired to the electricity supply so that they can move. 

9. Contributions to The Art Society

1973. Marzo, 26. Rafael Caldera, Jesús Soto y Alfredo Boulton en el despacho presidencial del Palacio de Miraflores.jpg Photo by Prensa Rafael Caldera – Wikimedia Commons

Rafael would occasionally invite the spectator to participate in the work or even look from a distance. Rafael was known for deeply engaging the audience and making the experience more intriguing and stimulating. Rafael and Carlos both agreed with this movement, however, Carlos focused more on the way colors are perceived by the eye. 

Another artist that participated in their artistic experiments was Alejandro Otero, his series Colortions combines the same concepts of the perception of colors in the eye and the participators’ movement with the work. Except he gave greater attention to how the colors are controlled with vertical lines. This differed from how Rafael and Carlos only focused on it for a while before returning to their specific genre of art.

10. The Picasso Prize

Rafael won the UNESCO Picasso Medal in 1981, he won the award six years after it was created. The award was created to award musicians, artists, or institutions that have enhanced music internationally. However, the award was for his work in optical vibration and kinetic art. Rafael won the award again in 1990 for the same work.

Read more about other famous winners of UN awards here.