The artistic education of Simon Benetton is based on different experiences, which he personally pondered over, starting from when he was in his father’s smithy at a very young age to when he was attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. The long practice on iron processing blends with suggestions from different cultural backgrounds fueled by interest of Maestro Benetton in the sculpture of Marino Marini, Giacometti, Manzù and Henry Moore. In particular, it is necessary to emphasise the importance of contacts with Arturo Martini in the Treviso area.

In this period, the artworks stand out for the explicit reference to reality and for a predilection for everyday subjects such as landscapes, nudes, and animal figures.
At the end of the 1950s, his sculptural and graphic works showed a desire to move away from the academic education, because of a particular need of formal synthesis.

Some of his drawings of 1960-1962 are very relevant. In these drawings, the figure is re-elaborated and reduced to structural element, showing a close relationship with coeval or slightly later works like L’unione and Cordoglio of 1964-1966.

The graphic experimentation of these years allows us to understand better the elaboration around 1968 of a formal modular element that is independent from any realistic reference at this point and that can create a free rhythmic scansions in its repetition. This element is a module, an ideogram that represents the structural key of his creations. In fact, the module can assume an infinite number of positions and create rhythmic structures that take shape in every direction in space. It represents the “note” that creates the rhythm, based on a definition of Simon Benetton himself, and that characterizes all of his sculptural works between 1968 and 1973.

The new plastic form is obtained by cutting the iron ingot into modular parts that are later processed under the weight of the press (power hammer) and welded together to create rhythmic structures. The focus of interest is the dynamic and rhythmic projection of these modules. The new achievement is space.

In this regard, the 1968 work “Atmosfera di un volto” is significant, in which the figurative reference in the title (an explicit homage to Arturo Martini’s “Atmosfera di una testa”) refers to the space circumscribed by modular forms. The artwork suggests Simon Benetton’s standpoint towards the translation to and the claim of ownership of a completely personal language that starts from a plastic conception of space.

Sculpture is understood as an event in space at this point, and figuration is only rhythmic. The new spacial dynamics is clearly expressed also in the many drawings of these years, which are closely related to the creation of works such as Fedeltà and Verso la fede of 1969.

A limited series of sculptural works, such as Diaframma Modulare and Nuovi Legami, were created in this period too, juxtaposing iron-resin materials, and therefore anticipating by thirty-six years the concept of materialisation of light promoted by the artist.

The presence of module distinguishes the artwork of Simon Benetton until 1973. However, already from 1970 there is a glimpse of development of a new formal elaboration. Shortly after, another aspect emerges in Simon Benetton’s research, where the plastic form of the module is put together with broken and torn metal sheets.

The plastic, curvilinear forms of the modules combine with the rigid lines of the sheets flat surface and rise into the space, as can be seen in Argomento X of 1971.

The PERIOD OF SOARING

At the beginning of the 1970s, Simon Benetton’s research was directed towards the elaboration a different spaciality, that increasingly involves the iron sheet, cut with a blowtorch. In these years, the foundations were laid for the elaboration of a new dynamic principle that characterises Simon Benetton’s stylistic identity. This is the crucial moment when the rhythm marked by the structure of the modules is replaced by the rhythm generated by the dynamics of the cuts on the sheet. Therefore, the rhythm originates in the unitary structure of the sheet that is repeatedly cut and bent; it originates no longer in the dislocation of the modules in the space.

Simon Benetton’s interest was directed towards bending and piercing the material, exalting its potentiality. The “lastra di ferro non concede pentimenti” (“iron sheet concedes no reconsideration”) and requires a long and careful preliminary study that is achieved only through drawing. In these years he created several significant sketches, in which he worked on the sheet’s twisting and fan-shape through dense and repeated cuts.

A never-seen-before movement developed in space thanks to the shaping of flat surfaces under the continuous changes in dynamic forces and thanks to the creation of gradual moments of growth that bring the subject to be developed upwards, as in the 1975 urban macro-sculpture works Gesto (city of Treviso) or 1977 Ulteriori Prospettive (city of Trieste).

This process is characterised by a new methodological research in which the action of the blowtorch replaces the power hammer processing and cuts the sheet as if it were malleable.

The iteration of cuts is completed by twisting and rotating the sheet in a dynamic spatial structure.

Sculpture becomes the plastic gesture-sign projection of Simon Benetton. The dense cuts create their pattern in space through the rhythmic full-empty, matter-light contrast. The rigid form of the sheet spreads and wraps the surrounding space in an upward rotary motion. Light penetrates between the iron strips becoming in turn a sign and structural element that creates movement. The cut allows Simon Benetton to cleave “Diaframma”, to free the thought, the rhythm and the energy that potentially exist in the sheet.

As critics have repeatedly pointed out, the liberation of the form in space is the expression of a constructive thought, the almost symbolic image of a vital impulse of the human spirit conquering space. This is the moment of “Soaring”, as Simon Benetton likes to define it.

The particular relationship that develops between the space and the surrounding environment gives an architectural value to the work itself, which finds its full expression in the famous macro-sculptures, which are able to change the perception of public spaces and natural environments with their presence.

The technical experimentation allowed Simon Benetton to develop a personal “graphic style”, able to express the dynamics of his thought. In this way, the ideographic value of his language is clearly shaped, a value in which the sculptural work is conceived as gesture – sign.

Plastic structures develop through precise and iterated gestures. A dynamic, open and aerial form occurs repeatedly in these structures, as an expression of vital energy of thought released in space. The forms take on a particular lightness and almost “soar”, as the sheet permeated by air and light loses matter.