Franco Gentilini biography

Franco Gentilini was an Italian painter. He was born in Faenza in 1909. Between 1921 and 1925, he enrolled in the evening courses at the Scuola Comunale T. Minardi di Disegno e Plastica per Artigiani. During the same period, he went to Bologna to show his drawings to the painter Giovanni Romagnoli, who held the chair of Painting at the city's Academy of Fine Arts, who encouraged him to continue and introduced him to the art critic Nino Bertocchi.
In 1930, together with his friend Giuseppe Liverani, he went to Paris to study the Impressionists. In 1932, he moved to Rome where, by frequenting the Terza Saletta del Caffé Aragno, he met Ungaretti, Cardarelli, Barilli, Mucci, Cecchi, Sinisgalli, Diemoz, Beccaria, Cagli, De Libero, and Falqui. The following year, he held his first solo exhibition at La Galleria di Roma. The subsequent years saw him participate in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad.
In the 1940s, Franco Gentilini complemented his painting production with an intense graphic production and became associated with the collector and art dealer Carlo Cardazzo, who would also represent him abroad.
The artistic style of his works is characterized by the use of painting and drawing on a preparatory material background mixed with sand. The themes of his works include cathedrals, baptisteries, jugglers and street musicians, landscapes with irregular perspectives, women characterized by spool-heeled boots, bicycles, trucks, cats, and lions. Franco Gentilini is the artist of joie de vivre even though in these years he portrays a world shattered by the Second World War.
In the 1970s, he began to focus on creating sets and costumes for the theater and participated in Contemporary Italian Art Exhibitions in Spain, France, Japan, São Paulo, Brazil, and New York. Franco Gentilini passed away in Rome in 1981.