The Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art (Spanish: ''Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto'') is a museum of

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

Ciudad Bolívar Ciudad Bolívar (; Spanish for "Bolivar City"), formerly known as Angostura and St. Thomas de Guyana, is the capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolívar, Venezuela, Bolívar State. It lies at the spot where the Orinoco River narrows to about ...

, Venezuela. It is named after the kinetic artist and sculptor

Jesús Rafael Soto Jesús Rafael Soto (June 5, 1923 – January 17, 2005) was a Venezuelan op and kinetic artist, a sculptor and a painter. His works can be found in the collections of the main museums of the world, including Tate (London), Museum Ludwig (Germany ...

, who was born in Ciudad Bolívar. The museum, which opened in 1973, is a late work of the Venezuelan modernist architect

Carlos Raúl Villanueva Carlos Raúl Villanueva Astoul (May 30, 1900 – August 16, 1975) was a Venezuelan modernist architect. Villanueva went for the first time to Venezuela when he was 28 years old. He was involved in the development and modernization of Caracas, ...

. It contains 350 works of art, by a variety of artists, including Soto.

History

In 1959,

won Venezuela's National Prize for Plastic Arts; at the ceremony he announced his intention to start a museum in his hometown,

, but it was only in the late 1960s that he began donating artwork to the city. The donation in about 1969 included a large amount of property and pieces that were representative of his various artistic periods. The government in Ciudad Bolívar welcomed Soto's proposal, as it had no cultural institutions at the time, and in 1968 offered the neoclassical Casa Wantzelius in the city center for the museum. Architect

, whose experience creating the art-infused

University City of Caracas The University City of Caracas (Spanish: ''Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas''), also known by the acronym CUC, is the main campus of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), located in central Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. It was designed by ...

campus made him the ideal candidate to design an architectural space for housing art, first drafted a plan to renovate the Casa Wantzelius before it was discovered that the building was too damaged to proceed. In 1969, the state governor gave Soto and Villanueva an area of land between the old and new towns. This also allowed more originality in Villanueva's design. The museum, which covers , was constructed over a period of only nine and a half months in 1971; Soto visited the fresh site on 21 February, and the completion was announced on 4 December. The museum is located at the intersection of Germanías Avenue and Mario Briceño Avenue. It is one of the buildings in the New Cultural Center planned neighborhood. The III biennial "Pueblos en Resistencia" was held in the museum in 2019.

Design

Soto was good friends with Villanueva, who, in his later career beginning with the Venezuelan pavilion at the Montreal Expo in 1967, "tried to formulate architecture of essential features, of the greatest refinement and simplicity". Villanueva in this period felt that buildings were meant to hold things, and wanted to create buildings "without anything useless ..and so pure that there is no longer an appreciable difference between roofs, walls and natural spaces." One of the buildings of the museum replicates the Montreal Expo pavilion, standing high. Six buildings comprise the museum, and they are connected by covered walkways. Between the buildings and walkways is an internal garden which displays artworks by Soto and others as an

open-air museum An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum. Definition Open air is “the unconfined atmosphere� ...

. The design of the museum is reminiscent of

Roman villas A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas ...

and Cathedral cloisters. Villanueva was inspired by

Mediterranean architecture Mediterranean Revival is an architectural style introduced in the United States, Canada, and certain other countries in the 19th century. It incorporated references from Spanish Renaissance, Spanish Colonial, Italian Renaissance, French Colonial ...

and contracted builders from

Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...

, Spain, for the project. The buildings are relatively uniform, as they are all wide. However, there are various design differences. The first building has two storeys; besides being the entrance to the museum it is used for administration. In the following four buildings, artworks unsuitable for outside are exhibited. The sixth building is very tall and designed after the Venezuelan pavilion in Montreal. The administration building has its load-bearing columns set back so that the roof overhangs, the fourth building has two storeys, and the modular layout inside the exhibition buildings differ to accommodate the artwork. The interior walls do not reach the roofs, and there are gaps between the top of the external walls and the roofs, creating "a strip of natural light" and so fulfilling Villanueva's principle "that the roof, walls and natural spaces merge integrated into the architecture." The garden was designed for the best sunlight and to work in the space between buildings. The second, third, and fourth buildings of the complex all have three plain walls to increase exhibition space, with the fourth wall being almost entirely open to "make nature another exhibition object."

Art

The museum showcases Soto's works, but also includes art by international artists, particularly pieces with movement and dynamics. At its opening, there were eight Soto works in the museum: ''Muro Óptico'' (1952), ''Muro Blanco'' (1953), ''Ritmo Vibratorio'' (1957), ''Relaciones y Vibración'' (1964), ''Relaciones Negro-Plata'' (1966), ''Relaciones Virtuales'' (1967), ''Ambiente, extensión blanca'' (1971), and ''Vibración Central'' (1971). By 2012, there were 350 works housed at the museum; 122 of these are from international kinetic artists, and the remainder are works by Venezuelan artists including Soto,

Carlos Cruz-Diez Carlos Cruz-Diez (17 August 1923 – 27 July 2019) was a Venezuelan artist said by some scholars to have been "one of the greatest artistic innovators of the 20th century." Exhibitions * ''Physichromies de Cruz-Diez: Oeuvres de 1954 à 1965' ...

, Rafael Martínez,

Alejandro Otero Alejandro Otero (El Manteco, Bolívar, March 7, 1921 — Caracas, August 13, 1990) was a Venezuelan painter of Geometric abstraction, a sculptor, a writer and a cultural promoter. He was a founding member of the Los Disidentes group. Early lif ...

, Manuel Mérida,

Armando Pérez Armando Christian Pérez (born January 15, 1981), known professionally by his stage name Pitbull, is an American rapper and businessman. He began his career in the early 2000s, recording reggaeton, Latin hip hop, and crunk music under a multit ...

and Francisco Salazar.

References

External links

''Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto''
at Venezuelatuya {{DEFAULTSORT:Jesus Soto Museum Of Modern Art 1973 establishments in Venezuela Art museums and galleries in Venezuela Art museums established in 1973 Buildings and structures in Ciudad Bolívar Mediterranean Revival architecture Modern art museums Tourist attractions in Bolívar (state)