Modernity and Freedom: Lionello Venturi’s Impressionism

Lionello Venturi (1885-1961) is well known for the first catalogue raisonné of Cézanne’s oeuvre (1936) and for the collection of letters and papers from the Durand-Ruel gallery, Les Archives de l’Impressionnisme (1939). Like many art historians of his generation, he was first trained on Renaissance painting. In fact, his interest in modern art dates back only to 1920s, that is to the “rappel à l’ordre” years. In 1931 Venturi’s refusal to swear allegiance to the fascist regime forced him to resign from university and move to Paris, where he settled in 1932, in the midst of the economic crisis. Venturi’s antifascism is one of the keys to the profound change in his way of making art history: dismissed his philosophical idealism, Venturi became more and more interested in the artists’ material living conditions and on the circulation of their paintings. I focus on how Venturi came to study Impressionism with the methods of art history, and how he could recognize its specific character of modernity, with all the political stances that his antifascism and his condition of exile could add to the idea of modernity.