Born in Guadalajara, Spain, Sobrino began his studies of painting and sculpture at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid, in 1946. In 1949 he moved to Argentina studying at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires from 1950 to 1957. Deeply influenced by the Arte Concreto-Invención group, he adopts geometric abstraction as the basis of his work. In 1959, he moves to Paris along with Julio Le Parc, and later co-founds the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) along with Morellet, Ivaral, Gaqrcia-Rossi and Stein. In 1960, Sobrino began making reliefs and then three-dimensional constructions from transparent, tinted acrylic plastic and alluminum. He participated in fundamental  exhibits in the 1960's among those, Arte Programmata e Cinetica in Italy, The responsive Eye in MoMA NY, in 1964 went to found the "New Tendencies" group in Zagreb. In 1966 participated at the “Kunst Licht Kunst,” at the Eindhoven Museum, Netherlands.  Along his life he continued to explore different mediums and technologies incorporating them in to his oeuvre. He died in 2014.