Venezuelan painter, sculptor and kinetic artist. He studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Caracas from 1942 to 1947, and from 1947 to 1950 he was director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Maracaibo. At first he painted principally under the influence of Cézanne and Cubism and to a lesser extent under that of Mondrian and the Soviet Constructivists, whose work he knew from reproductions. In 1950 he settled in Paris, where he began producing abstract paintings composed of serialized and geometric forms that suggested effects of motion. These revealed Soto’s affinities with other artists later associated with OP ART. His first kinetic work, Spiral (1955; priv. col., see Joray and Soto, p. 57), consisted of two overlapping perspex sheets, each painted with a spiral to produce an apparently vibrating image. The exhibition Le Mouvement at the Galerie Denise René, Paris, in 1955, at which Spiral was shown along with works by Victor Vasarely, Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, Pol Bury and others, marked the official birth of KINETIC ART.

From Grove Dictionary of Art