Beginnings
Genta was born in Geneva in 1931 to an Italian father and a Swiss mother, trained as a jeweller and goldsmith at Ponti Gennari from 1946 and took his federal diploma in 1951. At twenty-three he drew the Polerouter for Universal Genève, and for the next twenty years he was the industry’s invisible hand, drawing for Omega, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and IWC without his name on any dial.
What he changed
In 1971 Audemars Piguet asked him for a steel sports watch of a kind no one had made, and by the company’s account he drew it overnight, thinking of a diver’s helmet with its screws: the Royal Oak of 1972, an octagonal bezel with eight exposed screws and a bracelet that was part of the case, sold for more than a gold Patek. The Patek Philippe Nautilus followed in 1976, the IWC Ingenieur SL the same year, and the Bulgari Bulgari, with the name engraved twice around the bezel like a Roman coin. From 1969 he also sold watches under his own name, with grande sonneries and Disney characters alike, and sold the company to Bulgari in 2000.
Why it matters now
The luxury steel sports watch is the shape of the modern market, and Genta drew all three of its founding examples. Before him the designer of a watch was anonymous; after him a design could be signed.
Worth knowingBy his own account he sketched the Nautilus in five minutes on a restaurant napkin at the Basel fair of 1974, while watching Patek Philippe’s executives at the next table.
Historian’s noteThe overnight Royal Oak and the Nautilus napkin rest on Genta’s own telling; Audemars Piguet repeats the first, Patek Philippe does not confirm the second. The figure of “100,000 watches designed” is his estate’s.
SourcesGérald Genta Heritage Association · AP Chronicles · WorldTempus