After moving to Parma in 1962, Goliardo Padova discovered new motifs of inspiration: aside from the themes around the Po Valley, new themes emerge, such as the Parma Apennines. The humid landscape of the Po banks is alternated with bare views of the hills. The flourishing vegetation of the vineyards and along the riverbanks is opposed by sharp thistles and dry trees. Seagulls and swallows are replaced by magpies. Regardless of the scenario, Goliardo Padova manages to enrich the everyday, domestic foundation by adding symbolic components that recall human pain and restlessness.
Birds are recurring subjects in Padova’s work: during the 1960s, they are usually gathered in flocks inside the landscape and they charge the atmosphere with a sort of gloomy energy; as the years go by, the birds are observed from an ever closer perspective and turn into big, supple silhouettes, with heavy wings that seem to prevent them from flying and behind which the landscape is only hardly visible.
This theme peaks in the “enclosed landscape” of the late period, where the view is enclosed in the space outlined by the spread wings of the flying birds. The incremental darkening of the artist’s perspective in this phase is also stressed by new themes: The obsessive appearance of insects – an expression of the deterioration of nature – as well as that of empty nests on bare treetops – symbolizing extreme loneliness and sense of abandonment, the last statements of a painting where human and natural intertwine.
Donated by Florenzio Padova, 2008
