Antonio Ligabue

Who was Antonio Ligabue?

Antonio Ligabue was an Italian painter, one of the most important Naïve artists of the 20th century.

He was born in Zurich, Switzerland on 18 December 1899, and died in Gualtieri, Reggio Emilia, Italy on 27 May 1965.

Ligabue was born to Elisabetta Costa, native from Belluno, and supposedly to Bonfiglio Laccabue, native from Reggio Emilia. In 1942 the painter changes his surname from Laccabue to Ligabue, presumably because of the hate towards his father, who considered the uxoricida Elizabetta Costa. In September 1900 he was entrusted to the Swiss Johannes Valentin Göbel and Elise Hanselmann. Tragically died in 1913 his mother, Elizabeth, and three brothers, as a result of food poisoning. He began to work occasionally as a farm hand and conducted a wandering life. After an altercation with her foster mother was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic. In 1919, following the complaint by Hanselmann, was expelled from Switzerland. From Chiasso was conducted to Walter, country of origin of the adoptive father but, not knowing a word of Italian, he tried to return to Switzerland. Brought the town, lived in the rescue of the City Hospice of begging wagons. In 1920 he was offered a job at the banks of the Po, and at that time he began to paint. In 1928 he met Renato Marino Mazzacurati who understood what the genuine art and taught him the use of oil paints guiding it to the full development of his talent. In those years he devoted himself to painting and continued to wander aimlessly along the River Po. In 1937 he was hospitalized in a mental hospital in Reggio Emilia for self-mutilation. In 1941 the sculptor Andrea Mozzali him to resign from the psychiatric hospital and welcomed him to his home in Guastalla, near Reggio Emilia. During the war served as an interpreter for the German troops. In 1945, for having beaten with a bottle a German soldier, he was interned in a mental hospital and remained there for three years. In 1948 he began painting more intensely, and journalists, critics and art dealers began to be interested in him. In 1957 Severo Woods, "signature" Il Resto del Carlino, and renowned photographer Aldo Ferrari went to Walter to meet him: there came a picture in the newspaper and still very well known. In 1961 it was staged her first solo exhibition at The Gallery Four Rivers in Rome. He had a motorcycle accident and the following year he was stricken with paralysis. Guastalla dedicated a major retrospective. He asked to be baptized and confirmed, died 27 May 1965. Resting place in Gualtieri, on his tombstone the funeral mask of bronze by Mozzali.