Piero Simondo



Piero Simondo was born in Cosio d'Arroscia (Liguria, Italy), on 25 August 1928. In September 1955 he founded, in Alba (Piedmont, Italy) -- with Asger Jorn and Pinot Gallizio -- the Laboratorio di esperienze immaginiste del Mouvement Internationale pour une Bauhaus immaginiste (Laboratory of immaginiste experiences of the International Movement for an immaginiste Bauhaus). Within the M.I.B.I. activities, Simondo was the editor of the rewiew Eristica, for which he made the image reproduced above. Simondo -- along with Jorn, Gallizio and Elena Verrone, who a year later became his wife -- organized the Primo Congresso Mondiale degli Artisti Liberi (the First World-wide Conference of the Free Artists) in September 1956. Simondo also contributed also to the organization of the demonstration for the "Urbanisme unitaire" in December 1956, at the Unione Culturale of Turin. In July 1957, during a vacation at his house in Cosio d'Arroscia, he founded the Situationist International with Michele Bernstein, Guy Debord, Pinot Gallizio, Asger Jorn, Walter Olmo, Ralph Rumney and Elena Verrone. The following January (1957), Simondo, Verrone and Olmo were excluded from the SI, following a violent disagreement with Debord.

In 1962, Simondo founded the CIRA (International Center for an Institute of Artistic Searches) in Turin; the organization's purpose was to expand the proposals of the Laboratorio sperimentale di Alba. From 1968 on, Simondo continued his artistic search as an individual. From 1972 to 1996, he worked at the University of Turin, at which he organized the laboratories of experimental activities in the Institute of Pedagogy and held the chair of Methodology and Didactics of the Audovisual Media. Among his publications are the following titles: Ars vetus, ars modernorum, Torino, 1971; Che cosa e stato il Laboratorio sperimentale di Alba [What the experimental Laboratory of Alba has been], Genoa 1986; La situazione laboratorio [The Laboratory as Situation], Turin, 1987; Il colore dei colori [The color of colors]; La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1990; A modo di presentazione, [foreword to the catalogue of the exhibition of paintings by Jorn in Italia], and Gli anni del Bauhaus immaginista [Jorn in Italy. The Years of the imaginiste Bauhaus], Turin, 1997.



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