Obituary: Jess Soto

ONE OF the remarkable things about the kinetic art of Jess Soto [obituary by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, 31 January] was its ability to disorient you physically, writes Colin Cooper. Standing in front of one of his immense filament structures in the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas, you felt yourself in a new and exciting world. It is a great pity that his major retrospective bypassed London when it came to Europe.

Soto played his guitar at the private view before his show at the Signals Gallery in 1965, and very well by all accounts. Some years ago I found myself in the Madrid workshop of the man who made his guitar, the late Manuel Contreras. On the wall was a construction by Soto: he had given it in exchange for the guitar. It was, Contreras maintained, the highest price ever paid for a guitar.