Paolo Venini 1895–1959

Paolo Venini was born in Cusano, Italy on January 12, 1895 to a middle class Lombard family. As a young man he studied law in Milan. During the first war he was stationed near Venice where he became fascinated with the glass mosaics and stained glass of St. Mark’s cathedral. After the war he began a law practice but soon came under the influence of Venetian art and antiquities dealer Giacomo Cappellin who convinced the young Venini to join him as a business partner in a new Murano glass enterprise in 1921. Since then it has become almost impossible to discuss the life of Paolo Venini as separate from his company—all the available biographical material about him lacks personal detail and inevitably lists towards the celebrated history of the company. Venini’s biography is, therefore, the story of a man whose literal personality has been subsumed by his professional life and persona. In 1940 the Swedish artist Tyra Lundgren described him as, “An ideally balanced personality: an able industrialist, an energetic merchant and an avant-garde artist with infallible taste, an expert technician, a lover of the medium, highly sensitive to the noble purity of forms”. Indeed, Paolo Venini seems to have been a person who was able to coax the best from his artists, designers and master craftsmen, a man who was a tireless promoter of his company and its aesthetic, a visionary who was able to combine the cultural sophistication of Milan with the ancient craftsmanship of Murano. By the time of his death in 1959, the Venini name had become synonymous with superb taste and elegant modern style. Perhaps no other biographical information is necessary.