The screaming hermit: Simone Terneldo
Stefano Pasquini
and magazines, he realized theatrical performances, organized conferences, he
wrote. He painted. Simone Terneldo, from Sala Bolognese but adopted by Modena,
has traversed the cultural environments both far and wide, and using numerous
expressive means. To call him an artist and to delve into only his artistic
progression would therefore be reductive. It is better, rather, to focus on
which way and for what reason his cultural course has indeed been so varied.
It would be wrong to read the expressive heterogeneity of
Terneldo as indecisiveness in choosing a particular creative direction. He was,
and is, a careful observer of his time. All that he has promoted in his
painting, in publishing and in the cultural events, is brought together in a
unique and precise identity that unites politics, society and aesthetics. In
1966, he moved to Modena where his first pictorial works emerge from this
period, they are acrylics on paper with simple and precise shapes: biological
forms in various colorings are inserted into a uniform background, suffocating
their existence. Already from these beginnings, Terneldo brings to light the
way that he will continue to express himself throughout his career: the
importance of the human being, inserted into a social system that is limiting
and that scavenges the individuality. Art that has, therefore, the task to
create a new being, to introduce a
dialogue with the spectator, giving them a new role in society.
His extra-artistic activity develops principally in the
1970’s. In that heated decade Terneldo perceives that his thoughts develop
better through the adhesion and the creation of cultural associations. In 1974
he founded the association “Modi Commune” – terminated in 1986 – with the
intention to propose theatrical and musical happenings in an environment in
which children would hold the role of protagonists.
The list of initiatives promoted from then on by Simone
Terneldo is limitless. An extremely active person, notwithstanding his
undertakings with the community, he always found a way to continue his artistic
research, which was often assisted by his writings. Since 1969 the artist had a
strong need to express himself on paper: in an act of rationalization his
artistic thoughts, in relation to the social mutations of that moment in time,
are articulated. Periodically he writes “clarifications”, as he calls them:
philosophical reports that look to the cultural and artistic situation of the
time in which they were written. In these texts, he often returns to the base
concept in his poetics: the concept of boundary. “The boundary is the space
within which the forces operate, the signs, forms and colors of the two
opposing forces (rational and irrational, good and bad etc)” says Terneldo. The
artistic creations come about in this transitory space, in which this
aforementioned new being is molded.
In the Eighties, Terneldo acquires the style that will accompany
him until the present day. In his canvases there is a formal clash; the
opposites are put into play with the primary colors (yellow, red and blue) and
primary shapes (triangle, circle, square). This dialogue between the
contrasting elements, in the mind of the observer, generates primordial energy,
passion, and drama: compulsions that society tends to anaesthetize. The simple
geometries that emerge on the canvas are archaic signs, fraught to recuperate
the primitive values of man in his true essence.
In the Eighties, he is part of the trend that returns to
painting. In Italy the Transavanguardia
group was initiated, and alongside them Terneldo took part in other pictorial
movements, such as Mooderblue founded by the critic Silvio Zanussi. In those years
and for all of the Nineties, he showed his artwork intensely.
The works that are produced later on demonstrate a slight
change, with a more direct confrontation with that which threatens the senses
and the vital elements of man. His declaration acquires, therefore, more direct
tones; it’s more involved in a social environment. Terneldo looks upon new
technology with suspicion, for him it undermines the use of the senses and
impedes the individual from having a harmonious rapport with reality. But not
only. The recent works scream with horror at the war and at terrorism with
their strong chromatic impact.
Terneldo’s development is fascinating. He is an artist that
is disappointed with contemporaneity yet he has not wrapped himself up in a
world made only from the pleasure of aesthetically pleasing art. He screams, he
lets himself be heard just as his colors do.
Stefano Pasquini’s essays can be read on
www.stefanopasquini.net.
