The major exhibition of Antonio Ligabue

Coming from Jan. 26 to May 26, 2024, in the Art Nouveau building at Valentino Park is an exhibition that takes stock of the artistic journey and troubled history of this visionary painter, featuring more than 90 works.

“Art, when it was possible for him or he himself chose, voluntarily, to practice it, represented for Ligabue not already a therapeutic itinerary or a salvific escape from his own, irremediable, existential torments, but the tale, raw, of the same, through witty allegories characterized by the presence of beloved animals: tigers, vipers, dogs, flies, bees.”

With these words, curator Giovanni Faccenda introduces the major exhibition dedicated to Antonio Ligabue that opens to the public at the Promotrice di Belle Arti in Turin on January 26, to run until May 26.

The exhibition is the first realized with the Augusto Agosta Tota Foundation, almost a year after the death of Augusto Agosta Tota, who was a friend, promoter and scholar of the artist.

Art for Ligabue was always an innate need that helped him endure the difficulties and sorrows of life. This can be seen especially in the strength of his paintings, which still strike a chord today, moving and striking deep.

Of Antonio Ligabue, the subjects of the works have been highlighted by the few who have been interested in him, largely neglecting the artist’s extraordinary technical ability.

This exhibition, intends to move away from the stereotypical view of the “madman”, of the mythological character to whom the cinema has done a great deal of good (with the two 1977 films starring Flavio Bucci and the 2020 film starring Elio Germano), to bring his discomfort back to a long tradition dating back to the 1800s, from Ensor to Munch and up to Van Gogh.

The works come from private collections, from the famous self-portraits to the 1953 Tiger Head and 1955 Leopard, from the 1954 Motorcyclist to the 1959 Crossing of Siberia: a body of 71 paintings, 8 sculptures and 13 drawings for a journey through his popular iconography.

Again curator Giovanni Faccenda concludes:

One of the new features of the exhibition are precisely some works not seen for a long time and some previously unseen works. There are self-portraits that better scan his life, like a kind of diary. In some he represents himself with a bloody temple, evidence of the time when he beat himself with a stone convinced that this would get the evil that gripped him out of his head. The aquiline nose, however, made him closer to the image of a cursed artist.