biography

Lionello Venturi was born in Modena on 25 April 1885 and died in Rome on 14 August 1961. He was the son of Adolfo, the initiator of modern Italian art history. In 1907, he graduated in Literature in Rome, with Professor Giovanni Monticolo, and shortly afterwards joined the Fine Arts Administration, first at the Gallerie in Venice (1909-1910), then at the Galleria Borghese in Rome (1911-1912) and finally at the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino (1913-1914). In 1915, he became professor at the University of Turin; in the same year he enlisted as a volunteer and took part in the First World War. In 1919, he returned, as a full professor, to Turin, where he had among his many pupils, Giulio Carlo Argan and Mario Soldati. In Turin, he met the industrialist and collector Riccardo Gualino, to whom he became a consultant; he also came into contact with Edoardo Persico and the group “Sei di Torino”, to whom he gave critical support. In 1931, he was among the few university professors in Italy to refuse the affiliation to the National Fascist Party and was therefore forced to leave his university chair in Turin. Unable to teach, Lionello decided to leave Italy. During the 15-years he spent as an expatriate, he combined his studies with anti-fascist political activity in support of the movement “Giustizia e Libertà”. In 1931, the year his voluntary exile began, Venturi travelled to the United States to give a series of lectures and prepare a book on Italian works of art in American collections. In 1932 he settled in Paris for seven years. Here, alongside other research, he worked on the catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne's work. In 1939, as the situation in Europe worsened, Venturi moved to the United States, where he spent the war years. Returning to Italy in 1945, after the Liberation, Lionello resumed his university teaching, choosing the Sapienza University of Rome as his seat, where he raised a new generation of art historians. Among his students there were also some young Roman artists who, in the aftermath of the war, not only admired him as an opponent of the regime, but also as a scholar open to modern art, an expert on Cézanne and 20th century art. Venturi wrote extensively in the fields of medieval, modern and contemporary art history, criticism and theory. He was author of hundreds of books and scholarly articles; he organised exhibitions; was a connoisseur and a consultant for important collectors; published collections of documents; and was the author of catalogues raisonnés of artists.