Bologna, 27 January 2023 – “It was a great entrepreneura great liberal and a great friend”. Here is the memory of Franco Debenedetti, Alberto Mingardi and Carlo Stagnaro, of George Minarelliwho died yesterday at the age of 91, son of that Vittorio who in 1958 launched the Minarelli enginesamong the most important producers of two stroke engineswhich in the era of the economic boom made young people fall in love with and bring them closer to the world of two wheels.
Minarelli joined the company in 1980 and, after the founder’s death, the reins were taken by him, who, in the early nineties, signed a joint-venture agreement with the Japanese company Yamaha for the production of four-stroke engines and propellers with automatic variator suitable for scooters, of which Minarelli became the world’s largest manufacturer. In November 2001 the Yamaha group acquired full control of the company and almost twenty years later, in 2020, Fantic Motor took over 100% of the shares from Yamaha.
Passed the corporate reins, Giorgio Minarelli, has always remained active and curious about the world. Just one example: at the age of 84, in 2016, he is a art lover (in his curriculum also the presidency of the Gam with Guazzaloca mayor) who discovers the world of graffiti and decide to invest. How? Becoming the first sponsor of that idea which then became the exhibition Street Art. Banksy&co proposed by Genus Bononiae to the City Museum in Palazzo Pepoli, and by setting up an association, Italian Graffiti, with Fabio Roversi-Monaco as president. The project, which became famous because it was much contested – irritating the artist Blu in particular, who decided to erase all his works from the walls of Bologna – started from the recovery (the tear) of the works of art drawn right on the city walls.
“The future is a more widespread patronage Minarelli said. We hope that other operators will take the field, there are many foundations and in our opinion this is a project for the city as a whole. To make the world talk about Bologna, to get young people to come to see, to discuss”. He discovered street art thanks to the restorer Camillo Tarozzi, who advised him to ask his children who Blu and the street artists were. And he asked his children of his own daughter Charlotte, his grandchildren, who actually loved this art. “If they get the wall of my house dirty, I’ll repaint it, if I find a nice graffiti, I’ll think about it”. Always at great speed in contemporary life, the Minarelli knight.
