Francesco Clemente

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Francesco Clemente

Born	(1952-03-23) March 23, 1952 (age 72) Naples, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Education	Architecture, University of Rome
Known for	Painting, Drawing
Website	francescoclemente.net

Francesco Clemente (born March 23, 1952) is an Italian contemporary artist. He has lived at various times in Italy, in India, and in New York City. Some of his work is influenced by the traditional art and culture of India. He has worked in various artistic media including drawing, fresco, graphics, mosaic, oils and sculpture. He was among the principal figures in the Italian Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s, which was characterised by a rejection of formalism and conceptual art and a return to figurative art and Symbolism.

Career

File:'Water and wine', gouache on paper by Francesco Clemente 1981.jpg

Water and Wine, gouache on paper, 1981,
Art Gallery of New South Wales)

Clemente's work spans four decades. His work is stylistically varied, inclusive, erotic, and nomadic. It embraces diverse mediums and diverse cultures as well, aiming at finding wholeness through fragmentation and witnessing the survival of contemplation and pleasure in our mechanical age.

Clemente's work is rooted in political utopia and expresses an anti-materialistic stance. In the 1970s he moved from photography to drawing and anticipated the return to painting of the 1980s.

His work is also nomadic. In the 1980s he divided his time between India and New York. While briefly associated with Neo-Expressionism he took an interest in collaborative works both with Indian craftsmen and with painters like Basquiat and Warhol, and poets like Robert Creeley and Ginsberg in New York. In an interview with The Brooklyn Rail, Clemente commented "these poets had been looking at the East for inspiration and I was also anxious to evade the materialism of the West."

In the 1990s Clemente explored intensely erotic imagery, inspired by the Tantra traditions both of India and Tibet, and turning contemporary preoccupations with identity and sexuality into an occasion to ask questions about the nature of the self. In the 2000s Clemente underwent a darker and grotesque phase, returning in recent years to luminous images of repose and transformation.

Since the 1980s until today, Clemente has also chronicled New York intellectual and social life through a great number of portraits, contributing to the revival of a genre until then somehow discredited.

Clemente's art has been presented in solo and group shows internationally. Major retrospectives have been held in the 1990s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at The Royal Academy in London, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and at the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo. Clemente's art was also featured in 1999-2000 at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. In the 2000s retrospectives were held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, at the Museo MADRE, Naples and at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. An exhibition of self-portraits and of Clemente's own version of the Tarot Cards was held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence in 2011.

The artist is currently represented by Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland, BlainSouthern in London, and Mary Boone Gallery in New York.

Clemente's work is featured in the 1998 movie, Great Expectations.

Francesco Clemente is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Timeline

1980s

Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1983; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1984 ; the Nationale Galerie, Berlin, 1984; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985 ; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987; the Fundacion Caja, 1987; and the Dia Art Foundation, New York, 1988.

1990s

Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Sezon Museum, Tokyo.

2000 and after

Major retrospective 1999/2000, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in Bilbao; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2004); the Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts (2004); Museo Maxxi, Rome (2006), Museo Madre, Naples (2009), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2011), Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2011) and Yale University (2013).

Recent exhibitions

The Tarot, Francesco Clemente at the Uffizi, unofficial guide and blog, September 8 – November 6, 2011
Palimpsest, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt June 8 – September 4, 2011
JK's Walk, Galeria Javier Lopez - Mario Sequeira, Madrid,October 27 - February 3, 2012
Winter Women, Summer Self, Galeria Lorcan Oneill, Rome May 27 – July 30, 2011
Ménage à Trois - Warhol, Basquiat, Clemente, Federal Art and Exhibition Hall, Bonn, Germany, February 10 – May 20, 2012
Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India, Rubin Museum of Art, New York City, September 5, 2014 – February 2, 2015

Works

A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows
Bestiary
Map Of What Is Effortless- 1978 Gouache on paper 60 x 57 in 152.4 x 144.8 cm
Inside Outside
Sun
Atlas
Fire
Abbraccio
From Story of my life
Scissors and Butterflies

Undae Clemente flamina pulsae, Francesco Clemente, 1978, Groninger Museum
File:Undae Clemente flamina pulsae 1.jpg
File:Undae Clemente flamina pulsae 2.jpg
File:Undae Clemente flamina pulsae 3.jpg
File:Undae Clemente flamina pulsae 4.jpg

References

Clemente, Francesco. Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed March 2017. (subscription required)
Clemènte, Francesco (in Italian). Enciclopedie on line. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed March 2017.
Francesco Clemente. Guggenheim. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Accessed March 2017.
"Francesco Clemente in Conversation with Alex Bacon". Brooklyn Rail. May 2013.
"Francesco Clemente in Philadelphia Museum of Art". Retrieved March 24, 2012.
"A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows". Retrieved March 25, 2012.

Misplaced Pages

Career

Timeline

1980s

1990s

2000 and after

Recent exhibitions

Works

See also

References

Further reading

Books

Online articles

Interviews