Rojo virtual - 1997
Acrylic paint on panel, and painted metal rods
62 x 62 x 6,5 cm

Signed, titled, and dated on verso

Provenance:
Private collection, Paris (gift from the artist)

With certificate of authenticity by the widow of the artist, dated 13 June 2008.

Soto belongs to the generation of post-war artists that helped shape the so-called kinetic movement with his participation at the pivotal "Le mouvement" exhibition in 1955 at Galerie Denise René in Paris.
Soto's approach to movement in art - as a means of expression, or for its plastic values - distinguished itself by its search to represent the world in constant motion through purely abstract structures. To quote the artist:
"[...] I began to find other activities that might satisfy my notion of what is abstract. I found this relationship only in mathematics and music. But since I didn't have the necessary training in the field of science - or five years to devote myself to the study of mathematics”I discerned that, through music, I could find a different way of handling the elements. Elements that answered to the idea I had of abstraction, which was the idea of a different way of deciphering the universe."(1)
During the 1960s, he found a means to suggest the universe in constant motion through the subtle layering of fine metallic grids against a background upon which was painted a similar grid of parallel lines, but with different colors. The vibrations of the fine grid, and the movement of the spectator when he approaches the work, convey poetically, but no less efficiently, this very notion of a universe in constant motion.
In a later corpus of works, called the "virtual" shapes - like the red circle in this relief - the primary geometrical shapes are indeed virtual. It is only by reconstructing the image of the circle in our imagination, that we perceive it.

(1) Fragment of an Infinite Reality, in Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, Yale University Press, 2004, p. 511.