Francisco Díaz Roncero—who wrote this review of the second exhibition, Mouvement 2, organized by the Galerie Denise René in Paris that included the works of Kinetic artists—stresses the current influence and presence of Latin American artists in contemporary trends. He explains that these trends transcend the usual boundaries of painting and sculpture to achieve something midway between the two. In a conversation with Jean Cassou, director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, Díaz Roncero identifies historical support for such ideas. According to Cassou, they are related to explorations of “entertaining science” that were conducted during the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, reaffirmed now by the restlessness and inventions, the hustle and bustle of the modern era in which the concept of “movement” is of vital importance.    

In this newspaper article Francisco Díaz Roncero focuses on two important arguments, claiming, on the one hand, that Latin American artists play a significant role in current expressions of “movement” art; he also insists that such art exhibitions—which transcend the usual categories of painting and sculpture to produce structures that are associated with, but not limited to, both disciplines—are neither a superficial nor a passing phenomenon. In a conversation with Jean Cassou, who at the time was the director of the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Paris, he claims that these works are related to historical attempts to express movement, including the research done during the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. Those attempts are finding their contemporary counterparts in our current desire to live in movement.  

Concentrating on those arguments, Díaz Roncero addresses one of modernity’s greatest ambitions in the region (in Venezuela in particular), which is to overcome the historical anachronism that consigned Latin American artists to oblivion because their work was out of step with European art. This was a major concern for Soto and Cruz-Diez, for example, who had once been condemned to repeat what had been invented in Europe half a century earlier. In the accelerated pace of Western culture, incipient Kinetic art is not seeking to produce superficial or transient works, but contemporary responses in an environment where the two artistic continents are on the same page.

Díaz Roncero’s arguments identify the modernizing ambition that guides Latin American artists in their desire to catch up and be in step with Europe and in their hopes for the technological development of the region. The interest in the materials these artists use (steel and plastic) is a clear reflection of their “progressivism” and the expectations of the Latin American people for material and technological progress. That modernizing ambition achieved extraordinary advances, but was unable to solve the profound social inequalities in the Americas; it was a commendable but flawed goal, an unrealistic dream for third world people that failed to put an end to the vast social disparities, although it did manage to improve living conditions for millions of Latin Americans.