On the 60th anniversary of Antonio Ligabue’s death, the Arsenali Repubblicani in Pisa will host the exhibition LIGABUE from December 26, 2025 to May 10, 2026. The Roar of the Soul. Produced by Daniel Buso and Elena Zannoni’s ARTIKA, under the patronage of the Municipality of Pisa and the Augusto Agosta Tota Foundation for Antonio Ligabue, the exhibition is curated by Mario Alessandro Fiori, secretary general of the Foundation, with art direction by Beside Arts. More than 80 works will guide visitors to discover Ligabue’s human and creative story, highlighting his closeness to the great protagonists of European Expressionism.
For Ligabue, painting was never simply a craft, but an instinctive and vital need. This expressive urgency is reflected in the extraordinary intensity of his canvases. The exhibition thus aims to celebrate the vicissitudes of a restless genius, marked by a courageous use of color - violent and harmonious at the same time - and a bursting emotional force. His figurative language takes shape in striking paintings.
The public will be accompanied along the milestones of Ligabue’s career, encountering his famous self-portraits and depictions of wild animals: tigers, leopards, birds of prey in flight or fighting for survival, and lions. An immersive journey that leads inside a harsh and magnetic jungle, a powerful mirror of the artist’s inner world.
“Another great opportunity to show Ligabue’s genius comes to Pisa,” said curator Mario Alessandro Fiori. “An exhibition where the strength of this artist, his expressive urgency and his belonging, often not sufficiently recognized, to one of the fundamental movements of 20th century European art: Expressionism, is told again and again. Ligabue was, in his own right, our expressionist. His works, with those faces distorted by pain, the fierce animals charged with vital tension, the wild, visionary natures, speak the same language as Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka. Like Van Gogh, Ligabue painted with the power of feeling, digging inside the pictorial material to return visceral emotions. At a time when Expressionism was sweeping across Europe as the language of restlessness and inner truth, Ligabue-though isolated and distant from the great cultural centers-was able to interpret its spirit with authenticity, bringing out, from his marginalized condition, a powerful, sincere, and unmistakably modern voice.”
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| Pisa celebrates Ligabue at the Arsenali Repubblicani on the 60th anniversary of his death |
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