Esperidi (2005)Acrylic painting by Gastone Cecconello

This large-scale work takes inspiration from the myth of the Garden of the Hesperides, reinterpreted as a timeless allegory of desire, vigilance, and forbidden knowledge.
Rather than illustrating the myth, the artist constructs a symbolic environment composed of architectural planes, luminous fields, and human silhouettes suspended in a theatrical space. The figures — reduced to archetypal forms — stand as guardians and witnesses, embodying the tension between attraction and protection, temptation and boundary.
The composition unfolds across multiple panels, with elements built in relief that physically emerge from the surface. Layered structures, rhythmic lines, and protruding shapes create a spatial depth that blurs the boundary between painting and object. Color functions not as decoration but as a structural force: intense yellows, reds, and greens evoke light, fertility, and danger, while the embedded golden elements allude to the legendary golden apples.
Created in 2005, Esperidi reflects a mature phase of the artist’s research, where myth becomes a tool to explore universal human conditions rather than a narrative subject. The work invites the viewer to move visually across its surface, as if entering a constructed space where time, myth, and human presence coexist in equilibrium.

Details:

• Acrylic painting on Other
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 300 x 115 x 4cm / 300 x 115cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Abstract
• Subject: Abstract and non-figurative