Francesco Clemente
| Francesco Clemente | |
|---|---|
 Water and Wine, gouache on paper, 1981, Art Gallery of New South Wales |
|
| Born | March 23, 1952 Naples, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Field | Painting, Drawing |
| Training | Architecture, University of Rome |
Francesco Clemente (born in Naples March 23, 1952) is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical. Dividing his time between New York and Varanasi, in India, he has adopted for his paintings a vast variety of supports and mediums, exploring, discarding, and returning to oil paint, watercolor, pastel, and printmaking. His work develops in a non linear mode, expanding and contracting in a fragmentary way, not defined by a style, but rather by his recording of the fluctuations of the self, as he experiences it. The goal is to embrace an expanded consciousness, and to witness, playfully, the survival of the ecstatic experience in a materialistic society
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[edit] Life and work
Following his architectural studies in Rome, Clemente travelled to Afghanistan with his friend Alighiero Boetti. Throughout the 1970s he exhibited works that reflected his interest in the contemplative traditions of India, where he lived for several years.[1] Since 1981 he has spent his time between New York City and India, where he collaborates with local artists. He has participated in numerous collaborative projects, painting with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, and illuminating poetry by Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners, Rene Ricard and Salman Rushdie. Clemente is a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters. He still regularly works in India and lives in New York City with his wife Alba and their four children.
[edit] Career
[edit] 1980s
In 1981, he settled permanently in New York City. During the decade of the 1980s Clemente was featured in shows at numerous international venues including the 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.
[edit] 1990s
Through the 1990s, surveys of Clemente's work were exhibited by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Sezon Museum, Tokyo. In 1998 Clemente produced drawings and paintings for the film Great Expectations.
[edit] 2000 and after
In 1999/2000, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in Bilbao organized a major retrospective of Clemente’s work. More recently his works were exhibited by the 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) and Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2011).
[edit] References
- ^ Charlie Rose in conversation with artist Francesco Clemente
