This essay aims to point out a specific part of Piero Simondo’s (Cosio di Arroscia 1928-Turin 2020) plastic production oriented towards the free decoration of everyday objects, mainly wooden furniture and ceramic furnishings. This is a clear speculative demonstration of the theories of autonomous decoration of environments as an alternative way to industrial design, matured in the circles linked to the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, aimed at strengthening the emotional dialogue between art, craftsmanship, and architecture of spaces. An artist, educator, and theorist of logical and experimental thought, active in Alba since the early 1950s and then in Turin since the early 1960s, Simondo is best known for being – with Asger Jorn and Pinot Gallizio – among the founders of the Experimental Laboratories of the Imaginist Bauhaus (Alba, 1955) and – with Guy Debord, Ralph Rumney, Elena Verrone, Walter Olmo, Jorn and Gallizio – of the Situationist International (Cosio di Arroscia, 1957). Indeed, his theoretical, artistic, pedagogical, and experimental activity extends far beyond the perimeter of such neo-avant-garde movements, which he abandoned as early as 1958. In particular, with the creation in Turin in 1962 of the CIRA (Cooperative Center for an International Institute of Artistic Research) collective and the subsequent direction of educational and audiovisual workshops for the Institute of Pedagogy of the University of Turin, Simondo expressed an autonomous and independent vision of the role of the artist in technological and consumer society, while continuing in parallel his artistic action, within which it is possible to isolate a free and constant line of decoration over time. Relying on archival research and bringing to light previously unpublished materials and documents, this essay will attempt to historically and critically frame Piero Simondo’s seemingly centrifugal and decentralized production, which ranges from painted furniture to decorative panels and tapestry, from tea sets to informal, more or less functional ceramics.
