Franco Gentilini - Rome

The urban landscape was already a popular subject in the Middle Ages and Modern Ages, but predominantly in an idealized manner. Scenes of city life became typical themes with a more realistic interpretation starting in the 19th century. It's worth remembering how, immediately following the realist movements of the 19th century, the Impressionists also placed great emphasis on the everyday, on everyday life, with a certain predilection, however, for the frenetic pace of the city, its crowds, traffic, and typically bourgeois settings. In Franco Gentilini's cityscapes, the magical, fairytale-like quality of his poetics prevails. In this case, the artist was inspired by a view of Rome depicting the church of Santa Maria della Pace.

Franco Gentilini's style is the fruit of personal research that has led to the creation of his own world with surreal, fairy-tale overtones. In constructing his characters and views, Franco Gentilini draws inspiration from a fanciful Middle Ages in which subjects are the product of colorful synthesis or a fairy-tale dimension, magical in its lopsided perspectives. Formally, this research is based on a highly refined graphic elegance that marries perfectly with the artist's boundless imagination. In this beautiful engraving, too, we see how a simple line describes the forms of the buildings in a complex space, constructed on multiple directions and viewpoints. The solitary presence of the dog heightens the sense of magic in Franco Gentilini's interpretation.

Franco Gentilini was born in Faenza in 1909 and passed away in Rome in 1981. He studied his city's ceramic tradition and later completed his artistic training in Bologna. In 1929, he moved to Rome, where he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts. His art, fairytale-like, dreamlike, ironic, and colorful, was expressed not only in painting, but also in graphic design, set design, and book illustration.

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