The Hispanic Society Museum is pleased to present an exhibition of historic works by the late pioneer of Kinetic art, Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005), on the occasion of the artist’s Centenary. The survey of works from 1960–1969 reflects Soto’s creative energy when he was at the heart of the art scene both in Europe and the Americas, and leading up to his groundbreaking “Penetrable” series.

Throughout his career, Soto was able to put into practice the idea of the transformation of matter into energy thanks, fundamentally, to the groundbreaking discovery of vibration that makes his work unmistakable. Vibration was his identifying stamp to such an extent that Soto himself considered this phase a singular period in all his work. “All I cared about [at that time],” Soto said, “was to show to myself that my idea did not depend on a certain way of doing things….I felt the need to prove to myself that I could make use of anything at all in my work. The idea was to incorporate things very mundane but also highly formal (scraps of wood, pieces of wire, needles, bars, and tubes), to disintegrate them entirely through pure vibration.” His mastery, his virtuosity was such, by this phase, that he could make anything vibrate.

May 25 – July 22, 2023

Museo y biblioteca de la Hispanic Society
613 West 155th Street
New York, NY 10032

More information HERE