Introduction
The exhibition LIGABUE. The Roar of the Soul, staged in the historic Republican Arsenals of Pisa, celebrates the great Italian-Swiss artist on the sixtieth anniversary of his death. It is a tribute to one of the most intense, tormented, and original figures of twentieth-century Italian art.
The exhibition is produced by ARTIKA, in collaboration with Beside Arts, and under the patronage of the Augusto Agosta Tota Foundation for Antonio Ligabue, an institution that has long been committed to promoting and preserving the artist’s legacy. The exhibition is curated by Mario Alessandro Fiori, Secretary General of the Foundation.
Featuring over eighty works, the exhibition unfolds through paintings, drawings, sculptures, and self-portraits that trace the human and creative journey of a man who was able to transform pain and solitude into artistic visions of extraordinary expressive power.
The selected works lead visitors into a sensory and symbolic immersion, made of vivid colors, vigorous brushstrokes, and animal figures that seem to emerge from a primordial universe. Tigers, lions, falcons, fighting roosters: each animal reflects an inner struggle, an instinct for survival that is also a longing for affirmation, freedom, and identity.
Particularly evocative are the self-portraits, in which Ligabue depicts himself with a tense face and wide, restless eyes, as if staring directly at the viewer in search of understanding. A silent, intimate dialogue that reveals both his fragility and his greatness.
Ligabue’s visual language, often labeled as naïve, proves instead to be surprisingly modern, capable of engaging in dialogue with major figures of European Expressionism such as Van Gogh, Schiele, and Munch. Like them, Ligabue paints with both matter and soul, digging deep to convey emotions that are real, urgent, and unfiltered.
This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to discover an artist who made art his voice, his refuge, and his truth. A roar of the soul that still resonates powerfully today and touches the deepest chords of the human experience.