It’s All Mental

Offered for sale by Denis Gouey of 'And Books Too' - for more information please contact him via email at [email protected] or text 203 232 4338

With original drawing to Professeur Venturi
[INSCRIBED, with a drawing] Marcel VERTES (1895-1961) It’s All Mental by Vertes with a foreword by Anita Loos

1st edition, 1948, limited to 3500 copies. Good. Folio, unpaginated, with black & white illustrations. Bound in publisher's textured paper cover with illustrated panel mounted on the upper cover (as issued), dust jacket illustrated in white, black and red. The cover lightly soiled and with a split to the upper joint, dust jacket in poor condition, somewhat soiled and stained, missing the spine and with some other smaller voids and tears.

With pen and ink drawing by VERTES, a Cupid hiding behind a drawn card reading “A Professeur Venturi bien sympatiquement Vertes N.Y.1950”

The recipient is presumed to be the antifascist art historian Lionello VENTURI (25 April 1885, Modena  14 August 1961, Rome).

Though appointed his father's successor in the art history chair at the University of Rome in 1931, Venturi refused to swear allegiance to Benito Mussolini's regime in August 1931 and so was forced to resign from the university. He left Italy, initially moving to Paris, where he wrote, advised art dealers and museum curators, and produced the first catalogue raisonne of Paul Cézane. After the establishment of the Vichy regime, he emigrated to the United States, living in New York City until 1945 and lecturing at a range of American universities. While in America, he joined the antifascist Mazzini Society. After the war he returned to Italy, taking up his chair in art history at Rome.

Offered by And Books Too