Self-portrait

A small work of intense expressionism and unarmed abandon when Ligabue withdraws by painting his own self-portrait, his contracted hands abandoned along his shrunken body while he is seated in a pause that gives a sense of the difficulty he is encountering in concluding the work. to seek within himself the charge that allows him to maintain the tension that prompted him to represent himself. While the face on the canvas has a distraught and depressed expression and still indistinct shapes, the disheveled face, with messy hair, thin, with large protruding ears, accentuated expressionistic features, has an intense gaze that contrasts with the overall air of discouragement to signal that the almost magically translated idea on the canvas is re-emerging with all its vital energy. The small format allows the work to be created with an admirable drawing and pictorial synthesis, while the surrounding environment is almost only hinted at and sketched with colors that recall the Roman School mediated through Mazzacurato and the artist's early period.