PORTE-BONHEUR | Heart | BO.MONTEBELLO

GianCarlo Montebello (1941-2020) was born in Milan, where he attended the Art School at the Sforza Castle. In 1967, in partnership with Teresa Pomodoro, he opened a goldsmith workshop entirely dedicated to working with artists. He subsequently founded GEM, for the production of editions of artists’ jewels: César, Sonia Delaunay, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Hans Richter, Larry Rivers, Niki de Saint Phalle, Raphael Jesus Soto, and Alex Katz are only a few of the numerous personalities (more than fifty) with whom he worked from 1967 to 1978. The first of the ornaments that he himself designed and realized was his Punto Colore, or “Point of Color,” and its principal characteristic lay in its “mobility”: the whole of its life resides within and depends upon the choices of the individual “who wears it”, and it was therefore a harbinger of one of the most authentic features of all of the work which, in years to come, was to follow. GianCarlo Montebello’s research finds its principal guide-lines in the study of the characteristics of various materials, and especially of their compatibility with certain forms rather than with others: he thus continued to develop the wealth of a “story told through images,” no less than of an ars combinatoria which has always discovered its central element in its relationship with the body.

In the book, curate by  Luisa Somaini and Claudio Cerritelli, Cinquant’anni di gioielli d’artista italiani,  Electa, 1996 different jewels by GEM and GianCarlo Montebello are pressent.

Abstract by  Elisabetta Longari’s biography