Authoritative critics and estimators have already written about Galligani, an artist who has quickly revealed his immense talents. The names of Paloscia (who was the first, once again, to individuate the sure traces of artistic potential) or Paolucci, who outlined the value of the mythological figures, or the liking and appreciation of Romano Battaglia, in a recent exhibition which coincided with the Festival of "La Versiliana", to create the qualitative dimension of his sculptures. But in my opinion, it’s time to move forward to the critical progress of this artist, starting by attempting a philological organization, in a setting which exceeds the episodic nature of appreciation which, while being important, risks leaving the artistic progress in a bubble without time and without place; in the sense that great events, like great “masters” don’t come about by chance (despite being the product of creative genius) without a figurative culture behind them, fertilising them.
To be frank, let’s start by saying that Luigi Galligani is one of the latest generation of “masters” of Italian sculpture. He’s also an artist who, like few others, has used myths as the humus, the generative condition of his themes. I ought to mention that Galligani’s sculpture has an acculturation that crosses and absorbs, by distillation, all the great figurative sculpture of the Twentieth century, starting from Arturo Martini (in the sense of that impetuous gift – as indicated by De Micheli – indebted not only to imagination, but also to the instinctive disposition to affirm the immediate values of emotion, of the overflowing fervour towards sensitive reality, but also towards the terrestrial truth of existence). For this first philological splinter we could talk about an “intact sentiment” that permeates Galligani’s sculpture, of its basic noble terrestrial nature which doesn’t trap it in the rooms of museums but which immediately assumes outdoor placements in which to confront nature. Then there’s a second cultural distillation, which is that of the great Marino Marini (on whom, calculatedly so, Galligani discussed his thesis). But beware, Galligani doesn’t look at all Marino’s work: his digs and opts mainly for the "Pomone", for those themes that are nearest to the terrestrial nature of the models of the sarcophaguses of Tarquinia and Cerveteri; for a segment of the language of Marino, delineated towards female nudes and their metaphoric meaning, of which he captures and enhances the irremovable static quality and fecundity as a source and universal condition.
But there’s another cultural component that makes Galligani great, promoting him to the dimension of great “master”: the fact that he has assimilated the (fecund) silences and profoundly human dimension of Venturino Venturi, of whom - to the exclusion of his closest friends, such as Parronchi and Luzi – too little was captured of the role of master, confident with matter, capable of really unique formal syntheses.
Galligani has assimilated these lessons. He has used them well with his particular, highly personal synthesis, thus becoming the heir of the most advanced Tuscan sculpture in the furrow of fidelity to the “figure”.
And one more thing should be mentioned, to avoid the possibility of any misunderstanding. Galligani has found (and still finds) greats of the calibre of Vangi and Mitoraj, and Onofrio Pepe (a little less well known as yet, but no less important) on his artistic path: granted, it’s not a crowded path but nevertheless it is well populated in the high ranks of great figurative sculpture. But he has nothing to fear: because his works, the "Three Graces" in bronze or the beautiful "Minerva", are far distant from the able, excruciating figures of Giuliano Vangi, far distant from the great capacity for plastic suggestion of the works of Mitoraj, far distant from the agitation of the "path of myth" of Pepe, using a personal and unmistakable language, that of the "terrestrial nature of myth', which makes Galligani one of the stars of current Italian and European plastics.