Pequeña Blanca

Jesús Rafael Soto’s work reveals a constant quest to transcend the rigorous geometrical composition of pictorial space (coming from European abstraction).  Through different strategies like the superimposition of lines and colors, Soto attempted to escape from the representational plane by generating the illusion of movement, as well as eventually dematerializing the work of art: “My aim was to put color in motion, not as a chromatic harmony, which is another one of those academic residues from which I was fleeing, along with composition and balance.  What I sought was and is very distant from achieving a beautiful harmony of colors.  I just wanted to reach those combinations where color would have greater vibratory force, and where the spatial ambiguity that might result from its superimpositions would be apparent.”

As can be seen in Pequeña blanca [Little White One], Soto used steel cables, nylon, Plexiglas and wood to construct different planes that would break with the traditional connection between figure and ground.  Through the optical effects created by this maneuver, the lines of the background seem to vibrate, generating a sensation of movement that twists the spatial perceptions associated with painting