Franco Gentilini (Faenza 1909 - Rome 1981)

Franco Gentilini (Faenza 1909 - Rome 1981) went to school in Bologna. In 1928 he spent some time in Paris and in the following year one of his pictures was shown at the Venice Biennale.
He established his field of interest starting from a relationship between colour and design in which design remains visible as a bold outline of the forms. At the same time the pictorial material takes on a degree of importance through a preparation of the canvas that involved coating it with river sand.
He lived in Rome from 1932 onwards and was one of the frequenters of the third room of the Caffè Aragno, where he made friends with the painter Corrado Cagli, an active advocate of an anti-20th-century artistic revival, and poets such as Leonardo Sinisgalli and Libero de Libero. In the period between the two wars he favoured a figuration that reflected the tendencies of the Roman School, leaning towards a particular expressionism with references to German expressionism of the Berlin School, in other words to artists such as Georg Grosz and Otto Dix. He then turned, during the 1950s, towards a revival of popular forms in which he established a theme of ironic candour.