Lionello Venturi (25 April 1885,

Modena Modena (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language#Dialects, Modenese, Mòdna ; ett, Mutna; la, Mutina) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern I ...

– 14 August 1961,

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

) was an Italian historian and critic of art. He edited the first

catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

Life

Lionello Venturi was born in 1885, son of art historian

Adolfo Venturi Adolfo Venturi (3 September 1856, Modena – 10 June 1941, Santa Margherita Ligure) was an Italian art historian. His son, Lionello Venturi, was also an art historian. Biography He received his education in Modena and Florence, and in 1878 ...

. He became a specialist in the art of the

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

, but was also interested in late 19th and early 20th century art. In 1918 he met the financier and collector

Riccardo Gualino Riccardo Gualino (25 March 1879 – 6 June 1964) was an Italian Business magnate and art collector. He was also a patron, and an important film producer. His first business empire was based on lumber from Eastern Europe and included forest concess ...

, and advised him to buy work by

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...

. Gualino and Venturi supported Turin painters such as

Felice Casorati Felice Casorati (December 4, 1883 – March 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusua ...

and the ''Gruppo di Sei'' (Group of Six), which included

Carlo Levi Carlo Levi () (29 November 1902 – 4 January 1975) was an Italian painter, writer, activist, communist, and doctor. He is best known for his book '' Cristo si è fermato a Eboli'' (''Christ Stopped at Eboli''), published in 1945, a memoir of h ...

Francesco Menzio Francesco Menzio (3 April 1899 – 28 November 1979) was an Italian painter. Childhood and training He was born in Tempio Pausania, Sassari in Sardinia, to Pietro Angelo Menzio, a high school teacher, and Augusta Pic, both originally from Piedmon ...

, Jessie Boswell, Gigi Chessa, Enrico Paolucci and Nicola Galante. Venturi was appointed Professor of Art History at the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...

in 1919. One of his first students there was Mary Pittaluga, who wrote her thesis on Fromentin under Venturi. In 1930 Venturi organized a retrospective exhibition of Modigliani's work in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

based on the paintings owned by Gualino. Though appointed his father's successor in the art history chair at the University of Rome in 1931, Venturi refused to swear allegiance to

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

's regime in August 1931 and so was forced to resign from the university. He left Italy, initially moving to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, where he wrote, advised art dealers and museum curators, and produced the first

. After the establishment of the

Vichy regime Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...

, he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, living in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

until 1945 and lecturing at a range of American universities. While in America, he joined the antifascist

Mazzini Society The Mazzini Society was an antifascist political association, formed on a democratic and republican basis, situating itself within the tradition of the Risorgimento, and created in the United States by Italian-American immigrants in the late 1930s. ...

. After the war he returned to Italy, taking up his chair in art history at Rome. Lionello Venturi was influenced by the idealism of

Benedetto Croce Benedetto Croce (; 25 February 1866 – 20 November 1952) was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician, who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography and aesthetics. In most regards, Croce was a lib ...

as well as the writing of

Alois Riegl Alois Riegl (14 January 1858, Linz – 17 June 1905, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient ac ...

and

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in a ...

. His son was the historian

Franco Venturi Franco Venturi (Rome, 1914 - Turin, December 14, 1994) was an Italian historian, essayist and journalist, a scholar of the Enlightenment in Italy and of the history of Russia, and an anti-fascist active in the Resistance. Life In 1915, the year ...

Works

* ''Il gusto dei primitivi'' he Taste of the Primitives 1926 * '' Cézanne, son art, son oeuvre'', Paris: P. Rosenberg, 1936 * ''History of art criticism'', New York: E.P. Dutton, 1936. * ''Camille Pissarro: son art, son oeuvre''. Paris: P. Rosenberg, 1939. * ''Les archives de l'Impressionisme'', Paris and New York: Durand-Ruel, 1939 * ''Art Criticism Now'', Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941 * ''Painting and painters; how to look at a picture, from Giotto to Chagall'', 1945 * ''Marc Chagall,'' (1500 limited edition), Pierre Matisse Editions, New York, 1945 * ''Italian painting'', 3 vols, 1950–52 * ''Piero della Francesca: biographical and critical studies'', 1954 * ''The sixteenth century, from Leonardo to El Greco'', 1956 * ''Chagall: biographical and critical study'', 1956 * ''Four steps toward modern art: Giorgione, Caravaggio, Manet, Cézanne'', 1956 * ''Rouault: biographical and critical study'', 1959

References

1885 births 1961 deaths Italian art historians Italian art critics Italian art curators 20th-century Italian historians Writers from Modena {{Italy-art-historian-stub