Antonio Ligabue was one of the most original artists of the twentieth century, able to excite with a brushstroke of color and to transport us into its genuine and visionary world.
Born in Zurich, after a difficult childhood and adolescence he was expelled from Switzerland and arrived in 1919 in Gualtieri, in the province of Reggio Emilia, the homeland of his adoptive father. Here too his life remains very hard, marked by hostility, misunderstandings and repeated hospitalizations in psychiatric hospitals. But Ligabue resists, finding in artistic practice that "safe place" that he has never had. Painting and sculpture become the means to transform difficulties into opportunities and to give voice to his thoughts. The exhibition documents all of Ligabue's activity through over one hundred works, including paintings, sculptures and drawings, some never exhibited before.
In the itinerary, the fundamental themes of his research emerge: from the intimate diary of self-portraits to landscapes of the heart, from portraits to still lifes, from wild to domestic animals, from rural landscapes to hunting scenes and snowstorms.
Ingenious and visionary, “Toni al mat” – the madman, as he was called – finds in his artistic practice that “safe place” that he has never had, a physical and mental space to transform difficulties into opportunities and to give voice to his thoughts. This is underlined by Vittorio Sgarbi – curator of the exhibition together with Marzio Dall'Acqua – according to whom: «It is art, as was the case for Van Gogh, that grants the redemption of a condition that the ruthless pragmatism of bourgeois society continued to consider a disease to be rejected in its entirety». The consecration of the painter on a national level will come in 1961 when, thanks to Mazzacurati and Giancarlo Vigorelli, he has the opportunity to exhibit some of his paintings at the Galleria La Barcaccia in Rome. After this one-man show, he will increasingly arouse the admiration of collectors, critics and art historians, entering the ranks of the great Italian artists of the twentieth century. The retrospective at Palazzo dei Diamanti documents Ligabue's entire career and offers the opportunity to (re)discover the traits and colors of an artist who resists too rigid labels and categories to express, like few others, the natural and instinctive strength of his creative fury. His fantastic and engaging figurative vocabulary will be revealed through 100 works, including paintings, sculptures and drawings, some never exhibited before: from the famous and intense self-portraits, in which Ligabue notes the essential features of his personality, to the scenes set in Switzerland, nostalgic childhood memories; from portraits to still lifes, from rural landscapes, to hunting scenes and snowstorms; from domestic animals of the first period, to tigers with gaping jaws, monstrous lions, snakes, birds of prey that snatch their prey or fight for survival: a real jungle that the artist imagines with hallucinatory imagination in the woods of the Po .
Edited by Marzio dall'Acqua and Vittorio Sgarbiwith the collaboration of Augusto Agosta TotaOrganizers Ferrara Arte Foundation, Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries and Antonio Archive Foundation
