Bolívar City, Venezuela, 1923 Jesús Rafael Soto, after a childhood that already revealed his inclination toward art, initiates in 1942 his education in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Caracas, where he is first introduced to modern art and is named ¿ with only 24 years of age ¿ the director of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Maracaibo. After a first individual exhibit in the Free Atelier of Art of Caracas, in 1949, Soto moves to Paris, where he joins the debates surrounding abstract art. While he tries to establish the direction of his own language, the artist works as a musician in a cabaret, exhibits for the first time at the Salon de Réaliteés Nouvelles de París, exploring in his works at the time the ideas of rhythm and progress. Advancing in the use of new materials, he incorporates tri-dimensionality in his series Métamorphose, which is admired in 1954 by Vasarely, causing him to launch his 1955 exhibit at the Galerie Denise René among names like Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Tinguely and Vasarely himself. Inspired by Duchamp¿s Machine optique, the artist decides to try ¿ without the use of a motor - to get his images to move, a decision that allows him to take his first steps toward a certain kind of visual cinematic. In 1956, he exhibits for the first time individually in Paris and participates at the Festival d¿Art d¿Avant-Garde, at the Unité d¿habitation de Le Colorbusier in Marseille, where he contacts Yves Klein; he exhibits the following year at the Museum of Fine Arts of Caracas, where he does an installation at the Ciudad Universtaria, titled Estrutura Cinética (Cinematic Structure). In 1959, he participates for the first time in a collective exhibit with the group Zero, in 1960 he wins the National Price of Painting in Venezuela. Part of the exhibit of cinematic art Bewogen Beweging, in the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, in 1961, Soto continues to participate in the manifestations surrounding the group Zero, growing close to the group Nouvelle Tendance as well. In 1965, he exhibits in New York¿s Kootz Gallery, and sees for the first time Malévitch¿s Quadrado branco sobre fundo branco, at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1966, in the Biennale of Venice, he shows one of his first penetrables, joining in 1966 the Lumiére et Mouvement exhibit at the Musée d¿Art Moderno of Paris. In 1968, the first retrospective of his work is shown in Caracas, and it runs in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France. A definitely consecrated artist, Jesús Rafael Soto has been developing new works since, sometimes interacting with specific architectural spaces, and participating in numerous exhibits, working even designing theatrical sets. In 1987, one of Soto¿s artworks is permanently installed at the entrance of the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris. Having been part of various International Biennales of Sao Paolo, in 2002, Dan Gallery made an exhibit of his work. Key figure in the denominated cinematic art, Jesús Rafael Soto creates a kind of dynamic geometry that has new ways of activating the spectator¿s sensibility in artworks that frequently incorporate the architectural space itself. After having studied and experimented with the character of his materials, Soto oriented his works toward a major refinement and subtlety, searching, in his own words, to transform the material elements of light, sharing in this way¿especially with his penetrable¿a determined constructive and conceptual slope of Latin American art, to which Brazilian artists like Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica also approach.