Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Roma RM, Italy
Sapienza University of Rome
77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX, United Kingdom
Whitechapel Art Gallery
2140 Nagakura, Karuizawa, Kitasaku District, Nagano Prefecture 389-0111, Japan
Sezon Museum of Modern Art
Carrer de Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona, Italy
Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
5401 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota, FL 34243, United States
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Roma RM, Italy
Sapienza University of Rome
77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX, United Kingdom
Whitechapel Art Gallery
5401 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota, FL 34243, United States
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
2140 Nagakura, Karuizawa, Kitasaku District, Nagano Prefecture 389-0111, Japan
Sezon Museum of Modern Art
Carrer de Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona, Italy
Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
Andy Warhol
Allen Ginsberg
Francesco Clemente was born on March 23, 1952, in Naples, Campania, Italy to a family of an aristocratic origin.
Clemente was fascinated by the art since his childhood which he spent in the post-war atmosphere which influenced the culture of the time. The young Francesco composed poems and liked drawing.
Francesco Clemente studied architecture at the Sapienza University of Rome where he came in 1970. He left the institution without receiving a degree and concentrated only on art.
While in the city, the young artist got acquainted with his art colleagues, Luigi Ontani, Cy Twombly and Alighiero Boetti. The latter although ten years younger became the teacher and a friend of Clemente.
In 1973, Francesco Clemente visited India for the first time. The artist explored the culture of the country, its religious and folk customs, including the philosophy of anatman. The passion reflected in many of his future canvases.
Francesco Clemente started his career in 1971 from the debut solo exhibition at the Galleria Giulia in Rome where he presented to the public his early artworks on paper, including the ink drawings.
After coming to India in 1973, the artist opened a studio in Madras (currently Chennai). While in this Indian city, Clemente collaborated with the local artists and miniature painters. With their help, he produced the Francesco Clemente Pinxit series in 1981. During the stint, Clemente elaborated his own painting style characterized by the use of the human body, myths and symbols non-typical for the West.
The international recognition came to the painter after his participation at the Venice Biennale in 1980. He was given a status of the leading figure of the Transavanguardia Italian movement known as a Neo-Expressionism in the United States, where Clemente relocated two years later.
At this time, he produced his first large-scale oil canvases dubbed ‘The Fourteen Stations’ demonstrated to the audience at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1983, after in Germany and Sweden.
A year later, he met Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat with whom he worked on several common projects.
Later, Francesco Clemente realized his fascination for literature by creating some book series along with the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
During the 1980s, the artist worked between Naples (Italy), Varanasi (India) and New York City (United States). In 1986, he took part at the exhibition held by the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
In a couple of years, he had his second Venice Biennale followed later by three shows in 1993, 1995 and 1997. The Chinese public had an opportunity to admire his pieces of art at the Sezon Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in 1994. The Italian art lovers explored his artworks at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Bologna five years later. Other important shows of the time became Documenta in German Kassel in 1992 and 1997 and the Whitney Biennial the same year.
Francesco Clemente pursued his trips in a search of inspiration and in 1995, he visited Mount Abu in the Himalayas. During the trip, he dedicated his time to walks and meditating, as well as to the creation of new watercolour each day. He also tried his hand in frescos and murals.
Despite his activity as a painter, Francesco Clemente was involved in the movie production. In 1997, he played an ill-fated hypnotherapist in Good Will Hunting.
A year later, Clemente took part in the project initiated by New York's Metropolitan Opera. The painter portrayed eight opera stars and demonstrated the canvases at the exhibition called ‘Sopranos’ at the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met in New York City.
One of the recent solo shows of Francesco Clemente took place in 2018 at Lorcan O' Neill Gallery in Rome and at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (Centre of the Contemporary Arts of Barcelona).
Francesco Clemente is an accomplished artist known as the person who managed to unite in his artworks both different mediums and elements of the various world cultures. He influenced the development of the Italian Transavanguardia movement in the 1980s. His artworks were admired by the audience on nearly every continent.
Clemente’s pieces of art are nowadays preserved in multiple museums and art galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Tate Gallery in London and many others.
A lot of professional art critics wrote about Francesco Clemente and his art, for example, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Kirin Desai. Moreover, the artist’s canvases were featured by Alfonso Cuaron in his Great Expectations movie.
Atlas
Inside, Outside
Fire
Bestiary
Abbraccio
Self-portrait
Three Dead Soldiers
Twins
Two Horizons, A Thousand
Untitled
Self-portrait with and without the Mask
Waiting
Sun
The Four Corners
Under the Hat
Map of What is Effortless
Furniture
This Was Then
Two Horses with Sun and Moon
Mille Feuille
Untitled
No Mud, No Lotus
Quotations:
"Collaboration is part of my work because the assumption of my work is that our identities are fragmented identities, that we're [each] not just one person but many persons."
"The challenge is to show - and if you want to show it, you have to see it yourself - that opposites are not opposite, but are embracing each other."
"I still feel that for a painter the task is to put an object into the world that is not going to be an answer to anything. It's going to be a reality of its own. This was a reaction to a heavily ideological stance that belonged to the generation before mine."
"My work is always in flux and in transition, changing according to the context. The only constant factor can be described as 'the continuity of discontinuity.' I would not be disturbed if sometimes I find my own work hard to understand."
"I am attracted to cultural contamination, to inclusive views, to rituals, to handmade things, to anonymity, to anything that looks worn by time, to anything that has a feel of poverty and nobility at the same time."
"I believe there is such a thing as an imagination shared by the different contemplative traditions. My goal is to collect images and references from these traditions and connect them with the emotions from the present-day, and common experiences."
Francesco Clemente speaks English and Italian fluently.
Francesco Clemente is married to an actor Alba Primiceri who often appears on his paintings.
