Owl Tearing a Dove Apart, 1951
In Owl Tearing a Dove Apart, Ligabue presents us with a raw and symbolic scene—a fragment of ferocious nature that is both an act of survival and an existential metaphor. The owl, wings spread and gaze fixed, has just seized its prey. The dove, pierced by the talons, is already lifeless, yet the predator’s gesture is not yet complete. It is a moment suspended between action and contemplation, between instinct and tragedy.
The setting is unusual: we are not in a forest, but beside a brick wall, in front of a window. Behind the glass, a pendulum clock can be glimpsed, stopped or perhaps still ticking, marking an indeterminate hour. A green curtain is slightly drawn aside, as if someone had just peered out. The scene thus takes place in a domestic or semi-domestic space—a stable, a courtyard—where the wild bursts into the everyday. Here, horror is not hidden in the forest; it unfolds at home, before our eyes.
The owl, minutely detailed, appears almost mythological: wide, deep eyes, a slightly open beak, talons contracted in the spasm of the deadly act. Its feathers are rendered with obsessive care, as if each individual plume were a blade, an echo of functional perfection. Around it, a few light feathers drift in the still air—residues of violence, poetic fragments of a concluded struggle.
The dove, the ultimate symbol of peace, is here reduced to a victim. It is not merely a bird: it is an idea of purity shattered, a soul sacrificed on the altar of necessity. Ligabue seems to tell us that nature has no morality, only rules—and within those rules unfolds the eternal drama of life and death.
The entire composition is theatrical, almost sacred. The contrast between the nocturnal predator and the pale dove, between the golden flash of feathers and the blue of the sky reflected in the window, creates a powerful visual and emotional tension. Everything speaks of conflict, but also of destiny.
In this 1951 work, Ligabue does not simply depict a naturalistic episode: he stages an existential enigma. The owl and the dove are two opposing, inseparable forces. And within the walls of a world made of solitude, silence, and motionless clocks, a universal parable unfolds: beauty is fragile, and life often asserts itself in its most brutal form.