Franco Gentilini biography

Franco Gentilini was an Italian painter. He was born in Faenza in 1909. Between 1921 and 1925, he enrolled in evening courses at the Municipal School T. Minardi of Drawing and Sculpture for Artisans. During the same period, he went to Bologna to show his drawings to the painter Giovanni Romagnoli, holder of the Painting chair 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, frequenting the Third Room of 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 The Gallery of Rome. The following years saw him participate in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad.
In the 1940s, Franco Gentilini combined his painting production with an intense graphic production and became connected to the collector and art dealer Carlo Cardazzo, who also represented 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 ankle 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 dedicating himself to creating scenes and costumes for the theater and participated in Exhibitions of Contemporary Italian Art in Spain, France, Japan, São Paulo in Brazil, and New York. Franco Gentilini passed away in Rome in 1981.