Francesco Gillia was born in province of Rome, Italy. He studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma.
After graduation, he moved to Hermosa Beach, California, working as product designer consultant for companies like Nike, Fila, Reef Brazil, Mark Echo and many other.
Three years later he and his brother Marco started Bottega Montana. They designed and manufactured pieces for: Paul Smith, Obey Giant, DWR, Herman Miller, Tretorn, Carlo Rossi, the Showtime House 2010 to decorate the Dexter room.
Bottega Montana’s furniture line uses a patent pending joint system and has been featured along with their high-end longboard designs in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, GQ Italy, Dwell, Wallpaper, Outside, Conde' Nast Traveller, El Mundo, Food & Wine and many others.  Some of it’s clients include Don Cheadle, Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian.  
Despite all the early successes of his design career, Francesco decided to return to his first love - painting.
Francesco's MFA thesis, Pronaos, was an installation of sixteen oil paintings of large-scale, frontal female nudes. While somewhat confrontational, the goal was to locate the viewer in a transitional place defined by a state of tension between the sacred perception of our being and the sexuality of the subject. Such positioning allows for a contemporary version of the classical dichotomy between the sacred and the profane.