Bronze sculpture 'Animals in Fight' created by Antonio Ligabue in the 1940s. The sculpture was reproduced in a limited edition, only 1,500 examples are in circulation.

Ø 40 cm Ø 23 cm h 26 cm

Antonio Ligabue (Zurich, 12 December 1899 – Gualtieri, 27 May 1965) was an Italian painter and sculptor, among the most important of the 20th century.

In his paintings the sensations and feelings that the artist could not express with words found expression. Among the various subjects, Ligabue prefers to portray animals, both domestic and exotic, in quiet or tense situations (ambushes, attacks, fights); but scenes of daily life (fields and ploughing), Swiss landscapes and hunting are also frequent in his paintings. The paintings created by Ligabue between the end of the twenties and the thirties have a rather simple structure. The colors are very diluted and dull, the contours are blurred and the dominant subjects are always the animals, but represented static and in profile. In the fifties, the most prolific period, the use of still bright, violent, expressionistic colors became freer and the dark contour line of the figures in the foreground acquired greater visibility, almost as if wanting to detach them from the background. Furthermore, full-length self-portraits became more frequent. It should also be remembered that Ligabue did not date his works and for this reason, and other elements, cataloging his work is difficult.

Parallel to his pictorial production is his sculptural production. The subjects of the artist's sculptural works were once again animals, initially represented static, then increasingly rendered in movement and in the description of details. Due to the technique adopted, however, many of Ligabue's sculptures have been lost: the artist, in fact, modeled his subjects with Po clay, made more malleable through long chewing; while the use of cooking, which would have made them less perishable, was an acquisition only of recent years.

Source - Wikipedia