Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
The good savage
Ligabue isolated, outcast, mad... the whole legend revolves around this diversity not being accepted by others, served and paid for by loneliness populated with nightmares, but also redeemed by the genius of his painting.
He was described as the reincarnation of the myth of the "good savage", the man who came from nothing, without a history, isolated from the human consortium, which nonetheless, in his paintings draws from an innate genius, in which life and art are romantically combined.
Ligabue while he paintsFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
The development of a personal language
In his first works Ligabue might appear to be an amateur genius, an artist who invents his own personal language, which is at times devoid of grammar, somehow ingenuous. He is someone who intuits rather than learns formal solutions. He seeks to tame a technique that is not docile.
Ligabue starts from a meticulous adherence to humble, everyday reality, made up of farmyards, domestic animals, farmers at work... right from the start he manifests a narrative will, in the first works simply anecdotal, therefore, increasingly symbolic, epic, mythical.
Farming landscape with cows (1939/1952) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Recount the colors
Color is the tool that Ligabue masters the fastest. Also facilitated by the fact that he doesn't need to draw the subject first, he plays on the chromatic mixture, on drawing increasingly complex and articulated nuances, tones and variations.
In the act of painting Ligabue prepares by identifying himself with each of the animals he would have represented, adapting his body to reproduce their typical movements and attitudes, the brushstrokes are quick, fast and decisive.
Mountain pasture (1928) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
First artist period [1928-1939]
In what will later be defined as the first period of his pictorial production, Ligabue begins to build his style. The scenes are paratactic, simple, he does not give importance to the pictorial construction but focuses exclusively on the iconography.
Eagle with fox (1944) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Second artistic period [1940-1952]
In the second period, Ligabue has elaborated his own repertoire of forms and masters the technique with awareness, he reaches a warm and lively tonalism, the brushstroke becomes broad and full-bodied.
Castle (1954) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Third artistic period [1953-1962]
During the third and final period of his painting, Ligabue reaches artistic maturity. The chromatic mixture lightens, the sign loses dramatic power. A recurring subject of this phase are castles, a dream of an extreme hour of peace and love.
Tiger attacked by a snake (1953) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Ligabue represents known and recognizable things: self-portraits, landscapes, figures of women and men, wild and domestic animals; and like all artists, he means different things than what he represents. However, unlike the so-called aware artists [...]
[...] Ligabue does not express himself with a speech that can be translated into words, but with a direct and obscure representation of something that is in itself indecipherable [...] he creates a relationship between two unconscious, his own and that of the user.
Alberto Moravia
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