Artist
Milton Jeronimides, Jeron, was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. When he was two years old, his parents moved to Rio de Janeiro - Brazil, where he studied. He graduated as an Electronics Engineer from PUC-RJ (Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro) and after that he obtained his Master Degree of Computer Science from the Manhattan College of NY. In 94 he moved to São Paulo.

A few years back, he started intensifying his artistic production under the guidance of masters such as Elias Murad, Tuneu, Peticov and Fingerman. Most of his studies were held at the MAM (Modern Art Museum) and ABRA. In 2002 he deepened his technical research at the St. Martin School in London and at the Art Students League in NY.

Jeron has participated in several exhibitions of contemporary art. In 2002 he received the III Art Supply Award.

His paintings in Oil and Acrylic reveal a colorful tropical richness, where insistent geometric forms stand out among abstract and figurative images. Obsessively a painter of forms diluted in bright and hidden lights, shadowy forms, defined by bright colors that break the serenity of the painting. According to Olivio Guedes, "Jeron is an artist of the @ Technology who gets inspired on the canvas support and the canvas plasma, realizing the merge of Internet with Art". His knowledge is translated in paradox feelings represented by symbols that present the existence paradigm. Objectivity and Subjectivity blend under the artist's sensibility resulting in his post-actual works.

Working as volunteer in community projects for many years, Jeron defends the contribution of artists that aims at the solution of social Brazilian problems.

Since 2002, JERON, has been developing artistic activities with children that are assisted and aided by the Division of Educational and Rehabilitation of Communication Disturbances of PUC-SP DEDIC (http://www.derdic.pucsp.br/). This work has been carried out in a joint procedure with professors and entity directors. It aims at stimulating expression in deaf children through plastic art instruments and visual art in general. In 2004 Jeron developed the project " Mosaics-Kroma Synergy." The work of the children from DERDIC was to elaborate a re-reading procedure of 10 works of this series of the artist's creations, simplifying the forms and ranges of colors in such a way to permit the elaboration of mosaics derived from the artist's works. Ten (10) mosaics were elaborated in sizes 70cm x 70cm that were applied on the concrete coverings of the tables used in the commons of the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC SP).

Jean Paul Getty, billionaire, owner of Getty Oil and more than two hundred different companies, was born in Minneapolis in 1892. He died in 1976 in England in his mansion-home in Sutton Place where he had been living since the fifties.

Besides oil and gas, one of his major interests was plastic arts. His collection currently resides in Paul Getty Museum in Malibu , California .This museum is considered to be part of the finest in the world and has received seven hundred and fifty million dollars as a donation from Getty .

So, what in the world does Jeron have to do with Getty? A whole lot!

Getty used to say that whenever he needed to hire an executive for one of his companies, he chose the one who besides fulfilling the necessary requirements for the position also visited art exhibitions, museums and art galleries.

Passion and interest in arts made an enormous difference to the richest man in the world. It was a sine qua non condition and a big advantage.

It goes without saying that had Jeron been a candidate in filling one of Getty’s electronics engineering positions he would have been a major hit.

Jeron’s professional characteristics allied to the others that only minorities possess would have turned him into an ideal candidate.

Jeron did not stay within the boundaries of electronics engineering. He went much further.

He just went far beyond, white canvas on the easel and brush in his hand.

Maybe he closed his eyes as Gauguin did in order to see.

And what did he see?

What he saw is what he painted.

And what did he paint?

He painted what is on the canvas.

Obviously! I hear someone say.

But obvious it is not.

At first glance it might look as though Jeron is one of the millions of abstract painters that emerged after the Second World War.

He is not!

Jeron was born in 1958 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Two years later he was in Brazil.

Here he grew up, studied and turned into a man.

During the last decade, Jeron started painting.

Had we been in the times of Renaissance he would be part of a master’s loggia.

In our days, the duration of the process of being an apprentice in painting or sculpture in the Venetian , Florentine or Roman loggias, has sped up.

In today’s art studios you learn fast, very fast .Time has changed. The byte replaced the atom. The pixel, the millimeter.

Currently, ten years in the life of a young artist correspond at least to fifty years in the life of a Renaissance artist. This is a fundamental difference. The vital dynamic is different and also is the rhythm.

Ever since Jeron made his first exhibition at the MuBE, Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, in 2002, he never stopped making exhibitions .He accomplished solo exhibitions in 2002 and 2003. He also participated of three group exhibitions.

The paintings I have seen of the series Forms of the World - painted last year- Jeron expresses through endless search. There is a permanent search in his apparently easy painting but do not be fooled…there is no easiness about his painting.

On the canvas the dialogue is set between mold and form. In the subtlety of this circumflex lies all the difference.

Literally speaking the mold is the empty recipient where the melted metal is placed – plastic, glass or any other liquid - , that once solidified, will take the desired shape of the recipient or mold.

The form corresponds to the external limits of the substance, which constitutes the body and to this body is conferred the shape, the configuration and the single aspect.

Jeron considers mold and form starting points and not final ones. In between these two poles his painting is being born. There is still a very long way to go.

Writing about Jeron’s emerging painting is enticing.

Observing the forms, the colors, the graphic signs, the overlays, the inter relation of images in multiple situations, the planes that oppose or complete each other, has in some way make me think of Paul Klee.

Why Klee and not Kandinsky?

Because Klee, having served as a soldier in the German Army in 1918 in the First World War, probably wrote while in a trench the essay , Schöfensch Konfession, Creative Credo , in which he says: “ Art doesn’t translate the visible, art turns it visible.”

Klee emphasizes the subjective nature of the artist’s inspiration and describes how graphic elements - dot, line, plane and space, - are activated as an energy charge that comes from the artist’s spirit.

For Klee and the futurists, “pictoric art is born from the movement, movement that is fixed and perceived through movement.”

“The creative impulse spurts towards life like a flame; it goes through the hand to the canvas and spreads until, just like a spark that closes an electric circuit , returns to the source: eyes and spirit”.

When Jeron said that: “painting is reflection. My reflection is movement”, his words echoed Klee’s.

This reflection, these movements are part of the flame, of the spark that frees the gesture and drives the hand which moves under the artist ´s careful eye.

In his paintings series Forms of the World there are moments where Jeron lets the abstract impressionism dominate. In others, geometric forms determine the composition. It is the time of sensitive, poetic and lyric geometry.

Pages of a diary, Picasso would say, each painting has its proper life. Life which, as Pollock wisely commented, the artist doesn’t control.

The minute the artist gives the final touch, the painting assumes totally its existence. It becomes a piece of art, autonomous.

I believe that Jeron knows this. Each painting he signs corresponds to a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a month, a year of his life.

Each one is his way to turn visible, those invisible molds and forms.

São Paulo, May 15, 2004.

Carlos Von Schmidt
Curator and Art Critic.