The focus of this research on the concept of the primitive enhances the understanding, in a comprehensive and thorough way, of the professional and personal life of Lionello Venturi (1885–1961), and in particular his book, The Taste of the Primitives (Il gusto dei primitivi 1926). Venturi’s notion of primitivism constitutes a common thread connecting the rich variety of his undertakings and ideas in the 1920s.

This project began with the observation of the elusive meaning of the term “primitive” in The Taste of the Primitives. In the book the term coexists as a historical and a conceptual reference. The concept of the primitive came to condense Venturi’s aesthetic theory. In its shift from a position within an aesthetic category, to one in which it occupied a place within a discursive frame, Venturi’s notion of primitivism became a ground within which his theory and his criticism, his collecting choices and cultural initiatives, gained meaning and value in a coherent way. Moreover, with this discursive practice, Venturi affected the cultural debate of the time, and came to offer an alternative perspective to the dominant discourse. His strategy indeed responded to the Fascist classicist discourse in an oppositional way. His definition and use of the idea of primitivism in the 1920s, emerges as a tool for promoting his ideas and authority as an art theorist, historian, critic, art advisor, curator, educator, and cultural influencer within an unfavourable context.

Looking at Venturi’s work from the perspective of primitivism has shed new light on the connections between art-historical scholarship and collecting practices. This angle contributed to clarifying the inspirational role played by the art collector Riccardo Gualino and his circle, along with the international network of scholars and dealers – including Bernard Berenson and Osvald Sirén – in developing Venturi’s thinking. Moreover, primitivism helped to explain aspects of Venturi’s interest in Chinese art, his contact with Theosophy, and his relation to Fascism and to the cultural debate of the 1920s. This perspective enhanced an analysis capable of bringing together theoretical and material aspects, Venturi’s thinking and his social life. At the same time, it also shifted the focus of my study from a theoretical and textual analysis, to a more complex multidisciplinary approach implying an extensive archival research.