LYGIA CLARK

(Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1988)

Lygia Clark’s artistic practice evolved from geometric abstraction to a radical rethinking of the boundaries between art, the body, and healing. Deeply influenced by her training in both Brazil and Europe, she initially aligned with the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements, sharing modernism’s formal concerns while progressively shifting toward a more sensorial and participatory language.

From the late 1950s onward, Clark distanced herself from the purely visual, developing interactive objects such as her renowned Bichos (Critters). These articulated sculptures invited manipulation, challenging the autonomy of the artwork and initiating new dynamics between object and viewer.

As her practice deepened, Clark introduced the concept of the “relational object,” expanding her work into therapeutic and psychoanalytic territory. These pieces, often used in exercises of body awareness and emotional expression, dissolved the line between artist and participant, proposing art as a site for transformation and healing.

For Clark, art was inseparable from life. She rejected the notion of the artwork as a static entity, favoring instead immersive, tactile experiences that made the viewer an active co-creator. Her legacy is foundational to contemporary discourses on participatory art and performance, particularly in Latin America.

She lived and worked primarily in Rio de Janeiro, where her influence continues to resonate in experimental and relational practices.

ELIAS CRESPIN

(Caracas, Venezuela, 1965)

His training in engineering and computer science is essential for the development of his work, which combines two universes: art and programming. The encounter with the work of Jesús Rafael Soto led him to discover the potential of abstraction as a form of mathematical representation. His first artwork, Malla electrocinética I(2004), is the result of a reflection process on the mathematics of movement. By using motors controlled by custom software, he manages to animate geometric modules whose kinetic metamorphosis alludes to both dance and mathematical analysis.

In 2018, Crespin was commissioned by the Louvre Museum to develop L’Onde du Midi (2020), a large-scale mobile sculpture in which 128 metal cylinders hang from nylon cables connected to programmed engines that generate algorithmically-driven movement. The undulations and transformations of the piece create a choreography whose motifs are the lines and planes of the museum’s architecture, materializing the abstraction of the formal continuities between work and space. Crespin’s research concerns time, form, and movement, not only as kinetic elements tied to aesthetics, but also as mathematical elements, tied to analysis and programming.

His works have been exhibited in several international solo and group exhibitions, including the International Exhibition in Astana; the XIII Cuenca Biennial; the Busan Biennial in Korea; the Grand Palais; the Maison de l'Amérique Latine; the Musée de la Musique in Paris; the Musee de Louvre; the Fondation Boghossian; the Verrière Hermès in Brussels; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH); and the Ullens center for contemporary art in Beijing.

He currently lives and works in Paris, France.

GEGO

(Hamburg, Germany, 1912 - Caracas, Venezuela, 1994)

Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) studied architecture and engineering at the Stuttgart Technical School, Germany, where she was tutored by architect Paul Bonatz, following the models proposed by the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. In 1939, due to persecution from the Nazi regime, the artist migrated to Venezuela, settling in Caracas.

In her new country of residence, Gego dedicated to design, furniture making, and the development of architectural projects. Additionally, she began a long teaching career that would lead her to be one of the founders and subsequent professors of the Institute of Design from the Neumann Foundation (Caracas) in 1964. It was during the 1950s that she deepened her artistic practice, which was at first of a figurative, expressionist type, and then —already in dialogue with kinetic artists like Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto— of a sculptural type, grounded upon spectator participation, action, and movement as key principles of production.

Her work is characterized by the experimentation with lines upon space, conceived as the most elemental unit of drawing, as well as for the innovative use of the grid, a form intimately related to abstraction in modern art. In 1969, Gego exhibited Reticulárea at the Caracas Museum of Fine Arts, an installation whose importance in the history of art cannot be understated. It is an assembly of modular pieces made of steel and aluminum, which constitute an apparently organic vast structure, which experience is marked by the rupture of the spaces that hold them in place.

JULIO LE PARC

(Mendoza, Argentina, 1928)

Julio Le Parc is one of the most renowned figures in the field of research, and experimental visual arts focused on both modern op-art, whose influence spans from the mid-20th century to the present. He studied at the National University of the Arts in Argentina, where he was first interested in the relationships between light and form. Immersed in the radical environment of the student movements of his native country, between 1955 and 1958, he participated in the occupations of the Academy of Fine Arts and the reformulation of its programs, oriented by the proposals of avant-garde artists such as the Arte-Concreto-Invención movement and where he met the influential art critic Jorge Romero Brest.

In 1958 he traveled to Paris after receiving a scholarship from the French Cultural Service, where he met artists such as Victor Vasarely and other important representatives of Kinetic art. From them, Le Parc extracted not only its formal proposals regarding movement but also its political implications to articulate aesthetic experiences without the need for previous knowledge or any sort of familiarity with the art world. Such implications derived into collective practices of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), of which he was a founding member, guided by a rejection of the position of art in capitalism. The collective emphasized anonymity and the participation of spectators through the application of industrial, mechanical, and kinetic techniques alike.

Afterwards, he participated in the Atelier Populaire during May 68 in France, as well as in various avant-garde radical publications, anchoring his production – always close to Kinetism – in a social and political commitment that conceives spectators no longer as participants in the work, but as co-authors of it.

He currently lives and works in Paris, France.

NICOLAS SCHÖFFER
 

(Kalocsa, Hungary, 1912 – Paris, France, 1992)

Nicolas Schöffer pioneered a groundbreaking synthesis of art, science, and technology that redefined the possibilities of artistic creation in the 20th century. Renowned for his visionary cybernetic sculptures and immersive environments, his work foregrounded the dynamic interplay between movement, light, and interactivity.

In the postwar period, Schöffer emerged as a central figure in kinetic and cybernetic art, formulating a radical new aesthetic based on systems theory and real-time responsiveness. His collaboration with engineers, architects, and musicians resulted in works that blurred disciplinary boundaries, anticipating the digital and multimedia art forms of today.

Schöffer’s iconic CYSP 1 (1956)—the first autonomous cybernetic sculpture—responded to sound, light, and movement through sensors and motors, establishing a feedback loop between viewer and artwork. These explorations reflected his belief that art should not only reflect but actively shape its environment, turning perception into participation.

Beyond sculpture, Schöffer envisioned a total integration of art into urban life. His proposals for cybernetic cities, light towers, and spatial orchestras imagined technology as a tool for enhancing human experience, social harmony, and spatial intelligence. For Schöffer, the artist was a “homo cyberneticus,” orchestrating a new harmony between man and machine.

He lived and worked in Paris, France, until his death in 1992. His visionary legacy continues to resonate across contemporary art, design, and media theory, challenging us to reconsider the role of technology in shaping aesthetic and social realities.

JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO

(Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923 - Paris, France, 2005)

Jesús Rafael Soto was an influential and central figure of post-war global modernism. He participated in the group exhibition Le mouvement (1955), at the Denise René Gallery in Paris, one of the foundational moments of the style. Throughout his career, he was prominent for the redefinition of the social role of art, rooted in wide research about the spatial-temporal quality of the artistic object.

Soto studied Fine Arts in Caracas, then he moved to Paris in 1950, where he became a part of the international group of artists that sought to renew the experimental art scene. Even though he has been commonly associated with Op Art, Soto’s work is rather characterized by the continuous study of movement and the dematerialization of the form, producing kinetic constructions where the active participation of the spectator is fundamental.

In 1958 he began Vibraciones, a series consisting of the overlap, in various levels, of grids and mobile objects that create infinite possibilities of vibrations and variations. Soto managed to create works accessible to all people, without marking the differences of age or cultural capital of the public, appealing to the very experience of the viewer in relation to the artistic object.

DING YI 丁乙

(Shanghai, China, 1962)

Ding Yi’s career includes studies in decorative arts at the Shanghai School of Arts & Crafts, a position as a designer in a toy factory, and studies in traditional Chinese painting at Shanghai University. The diversity of this background has been reflected, in his work, in the simultaneous coexistence of a high degree of apparent mechanization, repetition and precision, along with a creative impulse towards novelty and formal experimentation.

Though as a student he already favored abstraction, it was in 1988, when he began the infinite series called Appearance of Crosses, in which he started to develop a unique visual language that contradicted the typical formats of Chinese painting of that time. Using the cross as a formal referent, sometimes emptied from meaning, and sometimes associated with negation, Ding Yi established a distance from expression and the sentiment that predominated in his artistic environment. The idea of combining the principles of design with those of painting resulted, then, in an approach that he has called “the rational abstract”, in which the rigor of the lattice coincides with the dynamism of stroke and color.

His artistic practice includes painting, sculpture and installation, and is circumscribed by the idea of promoting the autonomy of the artistic field beyond politics and history. As he has stated: “abstract art can represent the spirit”.

He currently lives and works in Shanghai, China.