Antonio Ligabue: the life
Discover the personal story of one of the most important names on the Italian art scene of the 20th century.
Plowing (1961) by Antonio LigabueFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Childhood in Switzerland
December 18, 1899
Antonio Ligabue is born in Zurich; his mother is Elisabetta Costa, unmarried and poor who, not finding herself in the conditions to look after the child, entrusts him, at the age of nine months, to a childless Swiss-German couple, the Göbels.
His adoption is never made official. The child grow very close to his stepmother, instead he has practically no contacts at all with his real family, he will only take the surname of her mother's new husband, Bonfiglio Laccabue.
Fighting roosterFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Antonio is a frail child, with a hunchback that hinders his physical development, while rickets determines a cranial malformation. At the age of 12 he was transferred to an institution for handicapped children where he stood out for his bad behavior and drawing skills.
The difficult adolescence
While Toni is in the institute, Bonfiglio Laccabue is arrested, and then acquitted, on charges of killing his wife and three children. Antonio will remain convinced of his guilt. In 1917 Ligabue was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic following a violent crisis.
An image taken from the documentary The mirror, the tiger and the plain by Raffaele Andreassi, 1960Fondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Expulsion from Switzerland
Expelled from the institute, Ligabue begins to lead a wandering life. He escapes and reunites with the Gobel family on several occasions until, in 1919, his mother, with whom he has a love-hate relationship, denounces his conduct to the authorities and requests his repatriation.
The arrival in Gualtieri
Ligabue is sent to Gualtieri, Bonfiglio's town of origin. He doesn't speak Italian, he doesn't know anyone. He tries several times to return to Switzerland but is always stopped by the authorities. He therefore begins to work occasionally and to live like a savage among the flood plains of the river Po.
Ligabue and sculptureFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
The beginning of the artistic journey
Working the clay that he finds along the banks of the Po river, Ligabue finds his first artistic manifestation: sculpture, which, despite the lack of any academic training, he proves to master with great skill.
Ligabue photographed in the company of the painter and sculptor Renato Marino MazzacuratiFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
The meeting with Renato Marino Mazzacurati
Ligabue also began to paint more assiduously. In 1928 he met Renato Marino Mazzacurati, painter and sculptor, one of the founders of the Roman School. Mazzacurati provides him with a shed and tools for painting, teaches him to mix and spread the colors.
Ligabue at workFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Ligabue's main interest is now directed to painting, his name begins to be known. He alternates moments of serenity with periods of crisis, lives in poverty, a nomad in the countryside or a guest at the house of acquaintances, often finding himself bartering his paintings for a hot dish.
The shelters
Between the end of the 1930s and the mid-1940s, Ligabue was hospitalized at the San Lazzaro psychiatric hospital in Reggio Emilia on three different occasions. At the basis of the hospitalizations are the irascible and violent character of the painter and the repeated acts of self-harm.
Antonio Ligabue at an exhibition of his worksFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
The first exhibitions
Discharged from the psychiatric hospital after the third internment, in 1948, Ligabue, who had never stopped painting, began to achieve a certain notoriety. Critics and gallery owners are interested in his art which, over time, has undergone a clear improvement.
Ligabue at the opening of the exhibition at the Galleria La Barcaccia in Rome, February 1961Fondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Ligabue becomes a case
Year after year, the articles, sales and exhibitions multiplied, including one in 1961 at the Galleria La Barcaccia in Rome.
The fame of the painter continues to grow, also thanks to the screenplay The mirror, the tiger and the plain made by Raffaele Andreassi in which Ligabue plays himself.
In 1962 a large anthology was dedicated to him in Guastalla.
Ligabue in the hospitalFondazione & Archivio Antonio Ligabue di Parma
Paresis and death
In November 1962 Ligabue was struck by a serious paresis which made him invalid and unable to paint. After several hospitalizations, he was sent to the Ricovero Carri di Gualtieri where he died on May 27, 1965.
