Casa-museo Giovanni Gentiletti
The Giovanni Gentiletti House-Museum is located in Santa Maria Dell’Arzilla. It is part of the Pesaro Musei circuit, and every third Sunday of the month visitors can discover the forge-studio of the Pesaro sculptor (Candelara 1947 – Pesaro 2010).
With his sketches, working tools and films on 40 years of artistic research (1969-2009), the House-Museum has become a place of narrative through six exhibition rooms: on the ground floor, Surfaces, Fragments and Triptychs; on the second floor, Zoomorphic Shapes, Herons and Calendars.
At the beginning of his artistic production, Gentiletti’s workshop is a visionary zoo, not sure whether archaeological or futuristic: first beetles and swallows in flight, then herons with long beaks with legs and nails like daggers and round rapacious eyes: zoomorphic forms with large wings clamped on solid bodies imprisoned in a mysterious form. Finally the mutation: matter becomes the protagonist erasing the zoomorphic fantasy and on the copper slabs appear first figurative elements then strange alphabets, guardians of ancient memories. Metal worker and skilled chiseller Gentiletti opens up to contemporary research, particularly the world of the Informal, and every spark from nature is transformed into dreamlike suggestion.
Giovanni Gentiletti followed his art studies, graduating from the Istituto Statale d’Arte F. Mengaroni,he taught embossing and chiseling in the Art of Metals and Goldsmithing section first in Ancona and then in Pesaro. From 1990 to 2008 he was part of the teaching team at the courses of the Centro TAM (Artistic Treatment of Metals) in Pietrarubbia, conceived and directed for several years by Arnaldo Pomodoro.
He exhibits in numerous exhibitions in Italy, wins prizes in sculpture and goldsmith art, and many of his achievements are purchased by prestigious public institutions. In 2006, the work “Nel vento del mito” was installed at the traffic circle in Via A. Cecchi, at the port of Pesaro; two large copper “sails” to commemorate Azzurra, the first and only Italian boat to compete in the America’s Cup in Newport in 1983 and built in the Cantiere Yacht Officine in Pesaro.
In 2008, he furnished Room 122, “Racconti dal Mediterraneo,” at the Alexander Museum Palace Hotel, as part of the project an “camera d’autore.” In 2010, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro purchased the “Altarolo-forziere dell’antico alfabeto” for its collection.
He died in Pesaro on May 8, 2010. In March 2012, the family donates to Pesaro Cathedral the “Trittico-teca dei Santi Decenzio e Germano,” the last chest specially made by the master to contain what remains of the remains of the two Pesaro martyrs.
