La costruzione della Storia dell’arte
contemporanea italiana e le difficoltà
dell’Accademia nelle biennali del 1948 e
1950: il caso fiorentino
Susanna Ragionieri
This essay examines how, in the postwar reconstruction of Italian contemporary art history at the 1948
and 1950 Venice Biennales, art historians such as Longhi, Venturi, Pallucchini and Ragghianti reshaped
the exhibition’s critical framework while simultaneously marginalising academy-trained artist-professors.
Focusing on the Florentine case, it reconstructs the 1950 controversy sparked by the Biennale’s decision to
reduce invitations and abandon the practice of studio visits, which prompted a formal protest from the
professors of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze — including Colacicchi, Conti and Vagnetti — who
denounced their treatment as demeaning to their standing as artists and teachers. Drawing on unpublished
correspondence (notably the Longhi–Pallucchini exchange) and press reactions, the essay situates this
episode within a broader shift that saw the Accademia’s authority as an arbiter of contemporary art
increasingly contested, and links it to the founding, that same year in Florence, of the Premio del Fiorino as
an implicit institutional response