The Centro Studi & Archivio “Antonio Ligabue” has central offices in Parma, and is the reference point for whoever reaches out to Ligabue for critical, cultural, and scientific issues.

The President is Augusto Agosta Tota, editor, cultural operator, and organizer of exhibitions and promotional initiatives. He is from Guastalla and has been active in Parma since 1970, being renowned including outside Italy as the artist’s most qualified ambassador. He knew the painter, supported him while still alive, and presented his works in a series of international exhibitions, starting in 1977 with the exhibition in Hamburg “Italienische naïve Maler”. Then in Toronto, Canada, when the RAI TV serial on Ligabue made by the director Salvatore Nocita with Flavio Bucci that grandly interpreted the painter from Gualtieri, was distributed worldwide. Produced from an idea by Cesare Zavattini, the TV serial won the Gran Premio delle Americhe at the Montreal Festival in Montreal in September 1978 and was sold to over one hundred countries.
The largest anthology exhibition ever seen up to that time in Milan, Italy, was dedicated  to Ligabue by Augusto Agosta Tota with an exhibition from November 1980 to January 1981 in the Palazzo dell’Arengario, Salone delle Cariatidi, in Piazza Duomo (The Dome Square). The exhibit was held again in the same year from January to March at the Grand Hotel del Mare in Bordighera, waiting to be transferred to the Civic Museum “Villa Ciani” in Lugano, from the 9th of May to the 28th of June. The next year the movie created from the TV serial by Nocita was presented in Paris, and on that occasion in March and April, Augusto Agosta Tota organized an anthological exhibition of the artist at the Italian Institute of Culture and at the Galerie C. Ratié, a part of which will shortly be hosted by the European Parliament in Strasburg. Le Figaro entitled his nine column article, in 1982, on occasion of the personal exhibition presented in Paris, “Ligabue ou la différence” Ligabue or the difference, meaning the diversity that made him special even when compared to a French artist like Van Gogh, with whom he is often associated. A delightful selection was presented in September 1982 in the “Renato Brozzi” Museum in Traversetolo (PR).
All the exhibits have been accompanied by a thorough and elegant illustrated catalogue produced by Franko Benedetti, (Perugia 1935 – Parma 1993), making publications by Agosta Tota well known, and until his death, the later publications by the Centro Studi, which is still partially inspired to this tradition.
            The Centro Studi & Archivio “Antonio Ligabue” was founded in 1983. In addition to the President, it was set up by Franko Benedetti, art director, Marzio Dall’Acqua, art historian, Afro Daolio, painter, art critics Raffaele De Grada and Mario De Micheli, Davide Lajolo, writer and art critic, Italo Mussa, art critic, Luigi Serravalli, writer and art critic, Franco Solmi, art critic, Giancarlo Vigorelli, writer and art critic, and lastly, Cesare Zavattini, writer.
Written by Davide Lajolo (Vinchio, Asti, 1912 – Roma, 1984), with illustrations extracted from drawings by Marino Renato Mazzacurati (San Venanzio di Galliera, 1907 – Parma, 1969), Agosta Tota published a splendid and exciting monograph of the artists of our times, entitled “Gli uomini dell’arcobaleno”, Parma 1984.
Today the Centro Studi scientific committee is composed of: Luigi Cavallo, art critic, Gianni Cavazzini, art critic, Marzio Dall’Acqua, art historian, Afro Daolio, painter, Raffaele De Grada, art critic, Giannino Magli, antique dealer, Gustavo Marchesi, writer and musical critic, Renzo Margonari, art critic and painter, Franco Maria Ricci, editor and Vittorio Sgarbi, art critic.
            The creation of the Centro Studi & Archivio “Antonio Ligabue” meant the personality and works of this artist linked to the painting of its times could be better and critically defined, in fauve paintings, the Nineteenth Century, the Expressionists, through a series of reconstructions on information and documents produced mainly by Marzio Dall’Acqua, who is considered to be the artist’s main historian.
So the exhibition in Cencenighe Agordino (BL) during June – September 1984 investigated his mother’s family, while that in the Biblioteca Comunale in Mirandola (MO) in the same year from October to January continued the artist’s production cataloguing began in Orzinuovi (BS) in 1983, where over forty unpublished paintings were presented. In the Castello Monumentale in Lerici (SP) in 1985 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his death, Ligabue was compared to the artists he lived with and shared experiences and knowledge such as Marino Mazzacurati, painter and sculptor, Arnaldo Bartoli (Reggio Emilia, 1900 – Guastalla 1993), the painter and sculptor Andrea Mozzali (Guastalla, 1985 – Poviglio, 1977), who were always close to him and helped him in various ways, the “antagonists” Pietro Ghizzardi and Bruno Rovesti (Gualtieri 1907 – 1987), and finally the writers, musicians, and artists connected to the Pia Cantina di San Francesco of Guastalla, in which Ligabue was involved. Edith Schloss also wrote about expressionism, reviewing the exhibition at the end of August 1985, on the International Herald Tribune.
In the same year we recall the exhibitions in Montecatini Terme (PT) at the Art Academy “Dino Scalabrino” and in the City Council Hall of Cavriago (RE).
Since then the Centro Studi activity has intensified and received prestigious recognition: the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, the patronage of Ministers (Cultural Assets, Foreign Affairs, Public Education) and of Regions.
More and more often Ligabue is compared with the artists of his times: the exhibition of Oderzo (TV) in Palazzo Foscolo, 1989, the one in Viterbo’s Palazzo dei Papi, 1990, that of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 1995, up to the large anthological travelling exhibition of Gualtieri (RE), 1996 which returned to Cencenighe Agordino, Modena, and Naples in the Galleria Mediterranea della Mostra d’Oltremare. The exhibition of Gualtieri held again at Palazzo Bentivoglio was superb, entitled “Riscontri nell’arte: ritratti e autoritratti d’artista”, in which the painter’s self-portraits are compared with and accepted as one of the greatest Italian masters of the Twentieth Century, definitively enfranchising its works.
In 1997, the Centro Studi supported the publication of the novel “The roar of the lion” by Karin Kavelin Jones dedicated to Ligabue and published by Capra Press, Santa Barbara (California).
            The centenary of Ligabue’s birth in 1999 was honoured by celebrations in the most suitable location at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, with the presentation by Marzio Dall’Acqua and Franz Billeter, who wrote: “The exceptionality of Ligabue in the Italian figurative panorama, his visionary abilities, the chromatic knowledge, the graphic and plastic energy of this artist, are the evidence of a great talent, which need not be searched for in the artist’s eccentricity; but on the contrary, he was able to explode despite the psychological difficulties, the imbalances and the thousands of obstacles in a life of ostracism.”
            Again for the centenary of his birth, the Centro Studi organized the exhibition at the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities in Rome at the old juvenile prison of the Complesso Monumentale di San Michele a Ripa, opened by the Minister the Rt Hon. Giovanna Melandri. The building itself was then presented for the first time since its renovation. The exhibition had the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, the patronages of the President of the Council of Ministers and of the Ministry of Cultural Assets, Foreign Affairs, and that of Public Education. The exhibition, organised with Luigi Cavallo, Marzio Dall’Acqua, and Vittorio Sgarbi, opened on the 17th September 1999 and closed on the 9th January 2000, was an anthology exhibition of the artist, but a section resumed the comparison of Ligabues self-portraits with those of the major Italian artists of the last century.
            In co-operation with the Centro Studi, in 2001 Franco Maria Ricci published “Toni”  a magnificent and sumptuous monograph, that completed and concluded a journey began in 1967 with the mythical publication that was the first from his publishing house, and that included the celebrated poem by Cesare Zavattini, the critical appraisal by Mario De Micheli and the witness by Marino Mazzacurati.
“Toni” was used as the catalogue for the exhibition in Mantua in 2001 at the Casa del Mantegna, and Arezzo in 2002 at the Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea. In the exhibition in the Castello di San Giorgio of Orzinuovi (BS) in 2003, the works by Ligabue were flanked by those of Mazzacurati and Cesare Zavattini, who was also a painter. 
            Finally, as editor and organizer, in 2004 Augusto Agosta Tota in co-operation with Marzio Dall’Acqua, published the catalogue “Catalogo Ragionato dei Dipinti” of Ligabue in two books composed of 868 reports and all copies of his paintings, generally full page. The reading of the work is accompanied by the philological study of the passages of property and the relative bibliography.
This publication was the fulfilment of thirty years of research work. With the publication of the basic essays in English too, Ligabue is now available to the entire international art world.
            It is an ideal way to connect with collectors who network between themselves, those that in time invested and believed in the artist. This was done especially for new exhibition projects to widen Ligabue’s appeal to the world. It is a way of supplying scholars with a guarantee in order to analyze its linguistic and creative aspects. Not only a tool of work, but also one of research and discovery, this general edition of the works of Antonio Ligabue is an excellent point to investigate and get to know his work and style.
            Augusto Agosta Tota organised many cultural initiatives, not only on the master of Gualtieri, but also for other artists such as Giorgio De Chirico (La Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta; 1988; Casa del Manzoni, Milano, 1989) and the anthological exhibitions of Salvatore Fiume in Russia (Moscow and Leningrad, 1991, and Gualtieri, Palazzo Bentivoglio, 1988, only one year after the death of the painter), the anthological exhibition of Nerone, again in the Bentivoglio of Gualtieri in 2004.
            Of course, the activity of the Centro Studi is documented by the catalogues that marked a basic stage of its research each time.

1899 - 18 December
Antonio Ligabue is born in Zurich to Elisabetta Costa, originally from Cencenighe Agordino (Belluno). He is recorded in the Registry of Births as Antonio Costa.

1901 - 18 January
Bonfiglio Laccabue marries Elisabetta Costa at Amrisweil and on 10 March legitimises little Antonio, giving him his surname, which the painter will change to Ligabue as an adult.

1963 - 24 July
He receives confirmation. By now, he is immobile and bed-ridden, while the fame of his paintings reaches national proportions.

1965 - 27 May
He dies in the Carri Poor House in Gualtieri.