French-Venezuelan artist (Cuidad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923—Paris, France, 2005). Attended the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Caracas from 1942 to 1947. In 1950, he travels to France and settles permanently in Paris, where he would begin his search for visual vibrations that evoke virtual movement, and that would make him one of the main masters of kinetic art.
His work seeks to create visual vibrations that evoke virtual movement. The utmost expression of this ever-increasing immaterial space can be seen in his “Penetrables”: spaces that do not invite to distant observation, but rather demand the viewer’s physical proximity and inner transit to truly live and comprehend the work, and to experience tactile and auditory sensations.
Awards
1960
National painting award,
Venezuela.
1968
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,
France.
1986
Sitting member,
European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities,
Paris, France.
1991
Member of the Academy of Arts,
Berlin, Germany.
More
1960
Wolf Prize,
São Paulo Biennial,
São Paulo, Brazil.
1979
Lifetime Honorary Adviser,
International Association of Art (UNESCO),
Paris, France.
1989
Silver Medal for Plastic Arts,
Academy of Architecture,
Paris, France.
1993
Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,
France.
1964
David E. Bright Foundation Award
XXXII Venice International Biennial of Art,
Venice, Italy.
Picasso Medal,
UNESCO,
Paris, France.
1990
Picasso Medal (Vermillion),
UNESCO,
Paris, France.
1995
Grand National Prize for Sculpture,
France.
1967
Gold Medal
XVI International Convention of Artists, Critics and Art Scholars,
Rimini, Italy.
1984
National Prize for Plastic Arts,
Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONAC),
Venezuela.
Honorary Doctor in Architecture,
Los Andes University,
Mérida, Venezuela.
1999
Asociación Española de Críticos de Arte Grand Prize (AECA),
ARCO ’99,
Madrid, Spain.
Restoration
LA ESFERA DE MARGARITA
La Esfera de Margarita is located in the median of an important avenue for Margarita Island’s commercial and touristic connection. The piece is one of the latest urban intervention made by Jesús Soto, and calls for the physical engagement of the viewers who, as they move around it, will note that the sphere becomes transparent and that some parts of the artwork disappear due to the effects of virtual volume.
“Tomorrow, just as it was yesterday, my art will remain bound to randomness, refraining from wanting to express the definitive; the immutable. For I have never tried to show reality immobilized at a certain moment, but rather reveal the universal change, whose temporality and infinity are constituent values. The universe, to me, is random; so should be my work.”
Jesús Soto.
Work around the world
From 1957, when he created his first urban intervention, Estructura cinética en la Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, to his latest work, Ovoide y Extensión Suspendida in the offices of the Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela in 2006 (posthumous) he has created a wide variety of integration artworks for public and architectural spaces in countries such as:
Venezuela, France, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, Spain, and Taiwan.
His work is exhibited in over 50 museums and in the world’s most important private collections, including:
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas
National Art Gallery, Caracas
Tate Modern, London
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Art Museum, Tel Aviv
National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome
Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japón
Stedelijk Museum, Ámsterdam
Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel