Jesús Soto: Genius who made art vibrate between lines and colors (+Christmas)

On June 5, 1923, Jesús Soto, one of the most important artists of kineticism in the world, was born in Ciudad Bolívar, who from an early age began to demonstrate his artistic inclinations, through the different works he did during childhood and adolescence.

Initially, he dedicated himself to painting movie posters and drawing letters, and so he gradually developed his art until he managed to obtain a scholarship in 1942 that allowed him to study at the School of Plastic Arts in Caracas.

At the end of his studies in 1947, he was appointed director of the Julio Árraga Art School in Maracaibo. However, he was not comfortable with the environment of the Zulian capital, so he dedicated himself to researching options in European cities, and finally decided to go to France in 1950.

At that time, there was a wide interest throughout the European continent in the currents that studied geometric shapes, especially in France. The artist took part in that experiment and joined artists who had the same aesthetic concerns.

Through his studies, he decided to approach pure forms through abstraction and the conceptual, as well as to use primary and secondary colors, black and white.

His first known works, born in 1951, were the so-called “repetitions”, simple geometric elements ordered linearly and repeated to infinity. To them were added the Progressions, the serial paintings and the Displacement, a work that resulted from the intersection of dots and lines. In France, he exhibited for the first time individually at the Denise René Gallery.

In 1973, the kinetic artist inaugurated, out of his own desire and inspiration, the Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art, located in Ciudad Bolívar.

Soto died at 81 years of age, in the French capital on January 14, 2005.

Mazo News Team