Urban Pigeons is a collection born from a physical relocation, from the stillness of the countryside to the noise of the city, but it quickly turns into an inner, emotional shift. Gregorio Zanardi translates onto canvas a sense of disorientation, a clear-eyed and disenchanted observation of an urban reality that feels frantic, alienating, and at times dehumanized.

The figures inhabiting these works seem suspended, exhausted, worn down. Crumpled faces, broken postures, vacant gazes. Humans running, smoking, breathing in fumes and dragging themselves from one break to the next, always too short. The title itself, Urban Pigeons, implicitly evokes those grey, ever-present city dwellers, pigeons, accustomed to chaos, hunger, and survival. Zanardi watches them and, in a way, welcomes them as symbolic alter egos of a humanity that has lost touch with its inner rhythm.

For Zanardi, painting begins as an unconscious, instinctive, and playful act. Yet in this series, the spontaneous gesture is charged with a darker urgency. The reference to Francis Bacon is explicit and reverberates in the expressive distortions, the tension of the colors, the psychological intensity. Still, alongside these influences, we feel Zanardi’s own voice, a young but already self-aware visual language, reflecting on the contemporary condition without moralizing, but rather offering a raw and poetic image of the struggle to live.

The work Vacations, only 5 minutes is emblematic: a worn-out face pleading for a break, dreaming of freedom while remaining trapped in the present. The entire collection seems to revolve around one uncomfortable yet necessary question: what’s the point of a “better” life if there’s no time to live it?

Through a figurative, visceral, and scratched painting style, Urban Pigeons invites us to face that part of ourselves that merely survives in the city, that adapts, that silences the inner voice to meet the demands of an increasingly fast, demanding, and distant system. In the contrast between visual beauty and emotional discomfort lies the strength of Zanardi’s work: a sincere attempt to give form to the invisible, to stop time, and return it to the gaze.

The artist's work does not follow a pre-established plan; it emerges from the depths of the unconscious, where spontaneity, play and improvisation play a central role. Immersing himself in this creative process, the artist was quick to identify what he wanted to express: a critique of a society that, in his eyes, appears soulless, trapped in a constant routine that empties people of their essence. His figures are often portrayed as sad beings, devoid of emotion, all linked by a common symbol: the cigarette. This element, for the artist, becomes an ambivalent sign that not only represents addiction or escape, but also the deep reflection on life that escapes while living on automatic.

With deep introspection, the artist raises existential questions about the nature of the decisions that drive people to seek a “better” quality of life, through the acquisition of larger or more luxurious homes, for example. In his opinion, these decisions, which promise greater comfort, are often the prelude to a greater sacrifice: overwork and the constant pressure to achieve material goals. This dilemma leads him to an even deeper reflection: Why do you want a more comfortable and comfortable place if you do not have time to enjoy it? Thus, the artist not only criticizes the superficiality of material progress, but also the disconnection that arises between the individual and the true priorities of life.