Farmers among the haystacks

Gorni was a true artist. Famous for his sculptures, which mostly depict characters from the Paduan peasant world, he was also an excellent painter and produced wonderful drawings. In all the techniques he used, he demonstrated a powerful and sincere creative attitude, with largely metaphysical influences. In particular, his painting of the 1920s and 1930s can be compared to the work by Carlo Carrà, even though Gorni displays a more solid approach in composing spaces and constructing figures. In the work that we admire here, strong women are portrayed performing their daily work in the fields, immobilizes in a series of poses that are both typical and painful, while the haystacks are coloured with tones that range from red to orange, depicted under an intense blue sky and on a ground that is similar to a dark marble slab. The greatness of Gorni is precisely the ability to grasp these gestures while maintaining the deep tension caused by fatigue and relating to the human condition in general. Thus he alludes to the long working hours, and to an eternity in which every detail of the body claims its belonging to a universal soul.