JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO (Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923 - Paris, 2005)."Vibrant squares". Síntesis"

JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO (Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923 - Paris, 2005).
"Vibrant squares". Síntesis" series, 1979.
Silkscreen on plexiglass and metal structure. Copy 63/110.
Published by the Banco Central de Venezuela, Caracas.
Signed and numbered by the artist on a label affixed to the reverse.
Publications: "La Universidad de lo Inmaterial: Soto", exhibition catalogue of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, pg. 62 Soto, Ministry of Culture, p.68, 129.
Size: 39 x 39 x 14 cm.
Rafael Soto's "Vibrant Paintings" are to be understood as part of the artist's vital research into the theories of colour, geometry and negative space, together with the use of synthetic materials, achieving vibrant and dynamic effects. The Venezuelan artist had been a pioneer of Op Art in Latin America, developing his avant-garde research since the 1940s, with which he sought to construct shared experiences, a sharing of experiences between spectators and creators. This is evident in the experimental works united under the heading "Síntesis" (Synthesis).
Soto began his serious artistic career when he started creating and painting posters for cinemas in Ciudad Bolívar. After painting posters, he received a scholarship to study art training at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas from 1942 to 1947. Once there, he took classes in "pure art" and the "training course for instructors in the history of art education". After graduating from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas, he received a teaching degree, then was hired to be director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Maracaibo from 1947 to 1950. While teaching there, he received a government scholarship. To travel to France, he settled in Paris. When Soto arrived in Europe in 1951, geometric abstraction was not very popular. He proposed a new type of movement that would add to three-dimensional art. In 1954, he began associating with Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely and other artists associated with the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and the Galerie Denise René. Soto was an innovator and created a new medium for geometric works. Essential to these "optical illusions" was plexiglass. Soto did not feel constrained by the size of his works. His works ranged from the smallest scale such as Kinetic Structures of Geometric Elements (1955) to the human scale of Cube à espace ambigu (1969). During his "baroque" period, Soto expressed his ideas and visions in haptics, creating works such as Puntos de goma (Rubber Dots, 1961) and Borroco nergro (Baroque in Black, 1961.) During this time, Soto also worked on his Penetrables, which were metal and plastic works that the viewer could interact with by walking through them. Soto participated in Le Movement in 1955, which is one of the major exhibitions that helped launch his career in kinetic art. Years after his stay in Paris, Soto's art shifted between organic and geometric forms. Soto's most important works of the 1950s and 1960s were abstracts painted in geometric forms that used a carefully selected palette of colours.