Underdog

Liliana Moro was born in Milan in 1961, where she enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, becoming a pupil of Luciano Fabro.

In 1986 she created her first work Scatole Nere (Black Boxes), four wooden boxes concealing four recorders that transmit the sounds of the city to convey Milan through an acoustic gaze as she herself defines it.

With this work, which is also her thesis paper, her academy period comes to an end.

In 1989 together with her friends Mario Airò, Stefano Dugnani, Bernard Rudiger, Adriano Trovato, she decided to open the space in Via Lazzaro Palazzi.

They also founded a magazine called Tiracorrendo. In 1990 the artists of the space were invited to create a collective exhibition at the Massimo de Carlo gallery which they titled Avanblob

They completely refitted the space and Liliana Moro intervened by turning the drawers of the gallery owner's desk back to front: in one she placed 200 clinical thermometers with a light that illuminated them.

The work entitled Svegliatevi (Wake up) is a warning addressed to citizens and society in general to wake up from a state of torpor and immobility.

Liliana Moro, who uses sensitivity in her research to make use of different expressive mediums ranging from drawing to sound, in the sculptural work preserved in the War Room of the National Gallery entitled Underdog of 2005 this time sizes herself up with the sculptural group, thus recalling an artistic tradition that, since classical sculpture, conveys dynamism, plurality of the group, and above all the idea of a narration in the orchestration of the volumes of single sculptures.

But in this case heroes are not depicted, there are no historical or mythological figures. There are only animals, to be exact, a pack of four full-sized Pit Bulls with long, straight tails.

The use of animals as a radical metaphor of human nature leads us to reflect on the meaning and importance of the animal world in figurative culture which, from the first mosaic paintings to the grainy images of videos showing clandestine dog fights, has never ceased to portray animals with symbolic meanings, in this case: conflict, oppression and death.

The work Underdog arrived at the national gallery in March 2017.

In the original sculptural group, the pack was made up of five specimens, two of which fight by biting each other on the jugular, one is lying on the floor perhaps dead, perhaps wounded, or perhaps simply asleep, while another is depicted in the act of barking with the snout extended upwards.

One of them appears meek, shunned, distant from the rest of the group, observing the scene with an almost human-like expression, wise and compassionate.

Only four of the five specimens have reached the National Gallery.

The fifth, the isolated one, was stolen by persons unknown in the night between the first and the second of March before reaching the museum where his companions still reside.