Multiplo on silver plate titled "Self-Portrait with Dog", created by Antonio Ligabue in the 1940s.

Ø cm 45 h cm 50 including frame

Antonio Ligabue (Zurich, December 12, 1899 – Gualtieri, May 27, 1965) was an Italian painter and sculptor, one of 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 preferred to portray animals, both domestic and exotic, in situations of calm or tension (ambushes, aggressions, fights); but scenes of everyday life (fields and plowing), Swiss landscapes, and hunting are also frequent in his paintings. The paintings created by Ligabue between the late twenties and the thirties have a rather simple structure. The colors are very diluted and muted, the outlines are blurred, and the dominant subjects are always animals, but represented in a static and profile view. In the fifties, the most prolific period, the use of bright, violent, expressionistic colors became freer, and the dark outline of the figures in the foreground gained more prominence, almost as if to detach them from the background. Furthermore, full-length self-portraits became more frequent. It is also worth noting that Ligabue did not date his works, which, along with other elements, made the cataloging of his work difficult.

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

Source - Wikipedia