Jesus Soto, Kinetic artist known for his ‘pénétrables’, dies at 81
The Independant
Jesús Rafael Soto, artist: born Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela 5 June 1923; died Paris 14 January 2005.
Jesús Soto was one of the greatest and most inventive artists that Latin America produced in the 20th century and a leader in the fine post-war generation of Venezuelan painters.
Soto was born in 1923, the eldest of five children of a poor family in Ciudad Bolívar, then a remote and backward part of eastern Venezuela, on the banks of the Orinoco. His birthplace was, he said, “the Venezuelan city most closely linked to the imaginary, the closest to the jungle”. His musical and artistic talents were the resources with which he hauled himself out of poverty and into the front rank of artists working in Europe.
His father was a violinist and ensured that his son became competent enough on the guitar to perform in public. The young Jesús helped the family budget by drawing posters for local cinemas and theatres. At 19 he won a scholarship to study at the School of Plastic Arts in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, where he met such artists as Carlos Cruz Diez, a contemporary who, like him, was drawn to kinetic forms, and Alejandro Otero.
Soto (Plastic Arts of the Twentieth Century)
Jesus Soto memorabilia at eBay.com
February 19th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Found your site on google really great infos !! Thanks