Fernando Torm was one of those persons one rarely encounters. While it is not at all common to live constantly in close proximity with the magic of creativity as it is expressed in a work of art, he was an active participant in every endeavor he embarked upon. His unusual personality, with no place for the perfunctory or the stereotype, produced amazement, curiosity, admiration, fascination, and a sense of novelty,

A short while after arriving to New York, Fernando took courses in musical composition at Columbia University and then proceeded with photography, painting, engraving, film, quilting...
He learned specific disciplines from specialists and at learning centers, in addition to the passion of a self-taught child who plays through work, love of action, and profoundness within a wide spectrum. In the stage arts -dance, theater and performance - he contributed his performances of music and regal presence.

From his early youth Fernando Torm felt the need to express himself. He wanted to show himself to the outer world and to tell us who he was and what he felt. But since our society, in the mid 60’s was extremely conservative, our artist decided to emigrate to the United States.

Gaspar
Galaz

Fernando and I were classmates during high school years at the Instituto Nacional. In that class, we were all considered “geniuses” and they prepared us to be Presidents of Chile.
The only artist in the class was Fernando; and wherever there was a piano, we would ask him to play “a little something.” He played the classsics that we, young high school students, did not know.
Then, in 1972, by chance we met in Easter Island. His passion at that time was photography, so I accompanied him on his photographic expedition.
During the period I was the Director of the Cultural Department, at the Chilean- Northamerican Institute, I was the curator of an exhibition of his most recent art pieces.
Fernando was a genius, with great sense of humor, who exuded  charm.
He never was President of Chile, but an amazing human being, addicted to creativity.

At some intervals there’s a rhythmic matrix that Torm uses in his compositions (Call). The variation is produced for the repetiton of an interval; the transposition of a melodic line; the inversion of a phrase from ascending into descending. All these  procedures do not have a dramatic intention nor are they directed with specific intensions. They are procedures employed by Arnold Schönberg or Bèla Bartòk, but here they escape from a formal sense by searching for a freer a-tonality, by initiating the idea of a series - although not dodecaphonical - where certain modules accomodate themselves in repetitive blocks.

Fernando became fond of my music. In Cuba he played the opening performance of one of my 1967 composition : “The shot student”, with texts by the Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas. This piece was awarded a prize by Casa de Las Américas in Cuba, together with “Imprecations for the Vietnam Victims” and “Eclosion.”
The above mentioned pieces with a strong political flavor attracted Fernando very much. An artist with uneasy and dinamic spirit, in constant search for the unknown in man and the society surrounding us.
He was not politically involved, but he was involved with Life. Because Life is Art.