THE 80s
Pietro Ghizzardi does not stop painting, tireless: in this decade large size paintings prevail, they are painted on plywood in bright colours. The favourite scenes are those taken from his personal “bestiary”: the hunt among animals of the savannah and those of the jungle, often never seen but simply imagined or recalled in the descriptions of friends and acquaintances, but also among more common and “familiar” beasts – martens, birds, weasels, cats – with imposing sizes and human muzzles.
Ghizzardi goes also back to the practice of mural painting: in 1981 he accomplishes a mural with animal subject in Viadana (MN), on the walls of the town’s cinema. The fresco is now kept at the MuVi, Viadana’s Contemporary Art Civic Gallery. In 1983 he paints two walls in the apartment of the Morellis in Parma and in 1985 he tests himself with the Moses, in his new house in Boretto, where he moved in the mid 70s (the current House Museum Al Belvedere “Pietro Ghizzardi”).
The artist doesn’t stop painting portraits, confronting natural and landscape subjects and more and more often he illustrates his manuscripts, among which the four Libri universali degli animali volanti e atterranti are worth mentioning. They are embellished by educational tables, where the main animals described in the text are represented – this work is still unpublished.
Ghizzardi paints and draws, in the usual kneeling position that always characterized his execution procedure, until his death in Boretto on 7th December 1986.
