Antonio Ligabue. L’uomo, l’artista

The Orangery of the Royal Palace in Monza will be enlivened this spring by figures, colours and enthralling suggestions. On display are 90 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings that trace the human and creative life of Antonio Ligabue (1899-1965), the “tragic expressionist” of the Italian twentieth century. The exhibition features some of the paintings that are considered his masterpieces, covering a chronological span from the 1920s to 1962, when his illness effectively put an end to his activity. There are two main themes that characterise his works: animals, wild and domestic, and self-portraits, not forgetting other subjects such as scenes of rural life, landscapes of the Po Valley or castles and churches in his native Switzerland.