Soto is a universal-man-Venezuelan-painter raised to the highest conceivable power of that combination, because he possesses maximum human quality, maximum capacity to represent his country, and maximum maturity.

Soto does not remember when it was that he learned that he must be a painter, but he remembers that at seventeen it had been clearly and firmly revealed to him. And by then he had also discovered that, in contrast to river and jungle, man has a history, a before, a now, and an after, through which he is living or through which he plans to live.

Soto is a genius, because a genius is a person who discovers what is later passively accepted by everyone except by the discoverer himself who must continue to seek new paths to open. There are painters who have enjoyed a moment of genius, who have made a discovery, but who then repeat themselves to such a point that they become their own followers, and obstinately insist on making a formula out of what they discovered. In responding to the challenge of creation, the real genius continues endlessly to search and is forever unsatisfied.

Soto is such a creator. He is one of the few who have pressed into the future but refuse to consider themselves masters. Those of us who have followed his work closely can bear witness to the rigor with which he judges his own production, of his ability to open seemingly impenetrable paths, and to re-open what seemed to be perfectly closed cycles.

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Carlos Raul Villanueva, who has often worked closely with Soto (most recently on the design of the "Jesus Soto" Museum of Ciudad Bolivar) has written: "Half magician, half geometrist, Soto has managed to make surfaces vibrate, and goes on in great delight to conquer innumerable unknown dimensions. I have always believed in the possibility of a new attitude in the practice or architecture which might, as in the baroque period, free inner space from static vision, and convey the joyful kinetics of color in multiple dimensions. With his new contribution, Soto has opened a door to the marvelous scene of future art." The close cooperation and understanding between Soto and Villanueva is not coincidental. They both represent a Venezuela which is more profound, more authentic, more aware of its own worth and consequently more open, better qualified to look out beyond its own frontiers for the essential universal being, to understand it, to apprehend it, enrich it and integrate it into our own.

Sofia Imber
From exhibition catalogue Nueve Artistas Venezolanos
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas 1974

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