“Soto: Vibrations, 1950–1960”

Known simply as Soto, Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005) was a Venezuela sculptor and painter who settled in Paris in 1951 and became a leading figure in the postwar revival of geometric abstraction on the Continent. He also played a seminal role in the subsequent development of Op and Kinetic art. Soto’s early work built upon the style of Mondrian, but he eventually became interested in artistic experiments with transparent materials—such as Marcel Duchamp’s motorized sculpture, Rotary Glass Plates—and began to paint stripes and other shapes on stacked sections of Plexiglas for varying optical effects. Examples of both approaches—as well as others are included in the pocket survey spanning Soto’s first decade in Europe.