THE CREATIVE DIVERSITY – Antonio Ligabue, the drawing skills and love for the animals, between madness and a thousand trades

ANTONIO LIGABUE 1/4 – his strange destiny, to be born in one day in December, in a nation that is not his, from an unknown father. The man who, later, will walk aimlessly on the Italian banks of the River Po, still does not know the mental hospital, and even self-harm. An artistic genius, capable of transforming nightmares into enchanted colorful visions.

ANTONIO LIGABUE 2/4 – A difficult childhood, his custody to the adoptive parents, the birth of his first “oddities”. What was indistinguishable diversity, since 1948 becomes pictorial concreteness, appreciated by Italian art critics. He feel the animals as companions, understands them and loved them more than men.

ANTONIO LIGABUE 3/4 – The expulsion from school, expulsion from the adoptive nation and the arrival in Italy, without knowing a word of Italian. In the amazing series of existential vicissitudes, this man knows yet: a serious motorcycle accident. He died in a spring day, crippled by a severe paresis. In his paintings, dense and loud, you can observe nostalgia and ancestral violence, fear and excitement.

ANTONIO LIGABUE 4/4 – He lives on the charity of others, but meets a particular man (charitable and artistically astute). The painter Antonio Ligabue, born at this time – in 1928 – together with the mastery of oil paints. He is waiting for you in the cemetery of Gualtieri. Easy to recognize his tomb: a bronze mask, called “to Matt,” to the madman.

You can see its paintings on Meeting Benches, looking for: ANTONIO LIGABUE (1899/1965), ITALIAN PAINTER – Walking aimlessly in life and colors