Antonio Ligabue Gli anni della Formazione (1899-1919) by Renato Martinoni

Antonio Ligabue Gli anni della

Formazione (1899-1919) by Renato Martinoni analyzes the so-called formative years of his existence. Born in fact in 1899, and adopted by another family, the Gobels, when just 9 month old, this book take in consideration the first 20 years of Ligabue's existence, the years in grade to make the difference in the existence of a man for the rest of his life. It's a pretty sad and realistic book under many ways, plenty of documents, letters, certificates of psychiatric structures, articles of newsmagazines, because as you will read, not just the existence of Ligabue will be devastating, but also the one of his family of origin. At the same time also the adopting family experienced heavy problems with Antonio because of his difficult character, cause, this one of big sufferance. Plus there is the personal calvary of Ligabue, an immensity of internal sufferance, genereting later violence against her adoptive mother. The original family of Ligabue will be decimated on 1913, you will read the reason, a sad story and only the husband, the step-dad of Ligabue, Laccabue, will survive at that devastation, dying with tranquillity when old.

The new family of Ligabue hoped in a brilliant future for this poor baby, but little Antonio was a problematic human being so he started to spend most of his time in private institutes for special children and later in psichiatric structures. The family followed the mental illness of their son also changing house periodically for staying close to the various institutes where Antonio would have spent years sometimes.

There's to add that at the age of 7 little Antonio fell down from a tree injuring the head; said that, you musn't imagine that the toddler, the kid, then the teen-ager he became didn't have a formation. He studied and assimilated culture; he was fascinated by painting and sculpture, thanks also to the two years spent at the school of Marbach,  an innovative institute in the sector of curative pedagogy. Each student was stimulated in base at their natural tendencies. What this school wanted to do, was at the end, to trying to create a good manual job for all these people with some mental disturbs. For many reasons anyway the institute decided at the end of not keeping Antonio anymore.

Extremely complicated, Antonio was later expulse from Switzerland.

Ligabue became famous thanks to his paintings made in Emilia. Hills, fields, people and animals of that italian region; he lived there for more than 20 years!

A book that will reveal to all of you the tragedy and geniality of an existence still young lived in marginality. Ligabue was considered in Italy, "German", or Crazy and loved to spend more time close to animals than not humans.  

Antonio Ligabue, is called the "italian" Van Gogh. Same, in part, path, this painter has experienced a much more difficult existence if compared to the one of Van Gogh to my point of view. 

Van Gogh was supported by a lot of members of his family, and had excellent skills; he was a letter-writer, he read a lot, he had culture. He didn't suffer of particular deficincies. He travelled and stayed distant from his family at long. 

He was a brilliant man, with, of course, a lot of demons in his soul, but... He was surrounded by quality-friends and great artists. He didn't live marginalized but was part of the tissue of the society and operated in connection with the artists of the Impressionist's period.

Of course no one, if a real creative, would become great, if he wouldn't suffer a lot during the existence. 

This cover brings a curiosity: the painter, the Self-Portrait with Scarecrow was part of the collection of the ex patron of Parmalat and will be sold again soon.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori