VENTURINO VENTURI ©

VENTURINO VENTURI

Venturino Venturi was born in Loro Ciuffenna in 1918. He followed his father, an anti-fascist and emigrant, to France and Luxembourg in 1921, then returned to Italy in 1934 to complete his training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Here he fully experienced the cultural climate of the time, making friends with the painter Ottone Rosai, the poet Eugenio Montale and the younger writers Mario Luzi and Vasco Pratolini. His Florentine formative years ended with World War II and a serious wound on the Greek-Albanian front. The first exhibition of his work was held in Florence to enthusiastic reviews. He worked two years in Milan, where he met Lucio Fontana, then in Luxembourg, then again in Tuscany. He participated in major Italian art exhibitions, including the 1950 Venice Biennale. In 1954 he won the international competition for the Pinocchio Monument in Collodi, with an artistic and physical commitment that led him to a period of inactivity until 1960, when the La Strozzina gallery in Florence organized his first anthological exhibition, which was followed by other and numerous awards, public commissions and an intense exhibition activity in Italy, France and Luxembourg. In 1993 the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna, where Venturino chose to reside, opened a museum entirely dedicated to his work, and his works entered the permanent collections of major museums. Shortly after his death (2002) Casa Venturi, his atelier house now home to the Venturino Venturi Archive and the Documentation Center for 20th-century Italian Sculpture, was inaugurated and opened to the public. Works by Venturino can be found in private Italian and foreign collections and in the following museums: Venturino Venturi Museum in Loro Ciuffenna, Museo del Duomo in Prato, Museo della Grafica in Pisa (Palazzo Lanfranchi), Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Museo degli Argenti in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Galleria di Arte Moderna in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Contemporary Art Gallery in Arezzo, Vatican Museums, MNHA in Luxembourg City.