"Jesus Rafael Soto: 1955 to 2004" Exhibition
Haunch of Venison
This event has ended.
Together with the Estate of Jesus Rafael Soto, the gallery is pleased to present a major survey exhibition of the Venezuelan artist (1923 - 2005). This will be the first substantial exhibition of the artist in New York since his 1974 solo show at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York which later traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. Soto is recognized as one of the most important and influential Latin American artists of the 20th century and is widely regarded as a defining figure of the kinetic arts movement.
In the 1950s and 1960s his collaboration with Group Zero artists, including Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, Gunther Uecker, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana and Jean Tinguely, made him part of an unprecedented artistic exchange which stressed unity on an intellectual and creative level. This international dialogue transcended political borders as artists throughout Europe engaged and collaborated in an effort to stagnate some of the catastrophic divisiveness which had bought upon WWII. Throughout his fifty-year career Soto created a large body of work with a focus on the manipulation of chromatic color, line and the relationship between background and foreground in order to stimulate optical illusions.
Although his early inspirations were Cubism and Cezanne, Soto soon began painting his first optic works shortly after moving to Paris in the 1950s. Soto's paintings began to display sculptural qualities as he added three-dimensional components such as wires and metal bars as backgrounds. Highlights from the exhibition include "Structure Cinetique" from 1955 in which Soto's visual investigation is centered on the optic movement of geometric lines, creating visual effects infused with an energy that make his work highly kinetic.
[Image: Jesus Rafael Soto "Ovoide Mediano Negro y Rojo" (2003) paint on nylon and metal 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 x 22 1/8 in.]
Media
Schedule
from May 06, 2011 to July 01, 2011