He acquired his first artistic skills at the Myrhorod Art and Industrial School named after Mykola Gogol, from which he was expelled in 1912 for revolutionary activity. After working at the Poltava Ethnographic Museum, where he copied Ukrainian folk carpets, he entered the Kyiv Art School.

He first studied with Professor Ivan Seleznyov, and later with Fedor Krychevsky. At the same time, a significant influence on his formation was exerted by Afanas Slastion, who instilled in the future artist an interest in Ukrainian folk culture, ethnography and national imagery.

In 1917, he became one of the first students of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts, where he studied in the monumental painting workshop of Mykhailo Boychuk. It was Boychukism that determined his further creative path. Already during his studies, he participated in the monumental paintings of the Lutsk barracks in Kyiv, and after graduating from the Academy in 1922, he taught at the Myrhorod and Mezhyhirya Ceramic Technical Schools.

Since 1925, he worked as a teacher at the Kharkiv Art Technical School, which was later reorganized into the Kharkiv Art Institute. Here he formed himself as one of the leading teachers of the Ukrainian graphic school. Among his students were Maria Kotlyarevska, Oleksandr Dovgal, Ber Blank and Moisei Fradkin. At the same time, he was engaged in painting, book graphics, experimented with various graphic techniques and published art history articles.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Padalka was one of the most active participants in the artistic life of Ukraine. As a member of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (ARMU), he regularly participated in all-Ukrainian exhibitions. He created numerous graphic cycles, paintings and illustrations for books by Ukrainian and European authors, in particular to "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "Kobzar" by Taras Shevchenko, "Aeneid" by Ivan Kotlyarevsky and "Zakhar Berkut" by Ivan Franko. He is also known as a master of woodcut and the author of propaganda graphics. In 1930, he took part in the Venice Biennale, and also made a creative trip to France and Italy together with Mykhailo Boychuk and Vasyl Sedlyar.

In his work, Padalka combined the principles of the Boychuk school with the Ukrainian folk tradition, creating generalized, monumental images. A special place in his legacy is occupied by female images, in which the artist sought to embody a generalized type of modern Ukrainian woman. Pavlo Kovzhun characterized Padalka as an artist of exceptional hard work, consistency, and devotion to his own creative method.

In the mid-1930s, after the defeat of the Boychuk school, the artist suffered political persecution. Having moved to Kyiv, he worked on the monumental design of the Chervonozavodsky Theater in Kharkiv and taught at the Kyiv Art Institute, but accusations of “Boychukism,” “formalism,” and “Ukrainian nationalism” made him one of the targets of Stalinist repressions. In September 1936, Ivan Padalka was arrested, and on July 13, 1937, he was shot on trumped-up charges of participating in a "national-fascist terrorist organization." He was buried in the Bykivnyansky Forest near Kyiv in an unmarked mass grave. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1958.

Today, Ivan Padalka is considered one of the key representatives of the Ukrainian artistic revival of the 1920s and one of the most prominent artists of the Boychuk generation, whose work combined the traditions of Ukrainian folk art with the modernist quests of the 20th century.