Francesco Clemente: Difference between revisions

Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
	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
Born	March 23, 1952 (age 72); Naples, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Education	Architecture, University of Rome
Known for	Painting, Drawing

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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 and ironically, the survival of the ecstatic experience in a materialistic society.

Early life

Clemente was born 23 March 1952 in Naples, where he spent his childhood and adolescence in close contact with 17th-century art. After high school, he taught himself to paint and wrote and published poetry. He moved to Rome in 1970 to study architecture. The social unrest of the time period (popularly known as Years of Lead (Italy) ^[1] combined with artists he met, including Cy Twombly and Alighiero Boetti, to heavily influence his early work.^[2]

Career

Italian born artist Francesco Clemente (b. 1952, Naples) is a painter whose 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 1970's he moved from photography to drawing and anticipated the return to painting of the 1980's.

Clemente's work is nomadic. In the 1980's 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 Creeley and Ginsberg in New York.

In the 1990's Clemente's work explored intensely erotic imagery, inspired by the Tantric 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 2000's Clemente's work went through a darker and grotesque phase, returning in the last years to luminous images of repose and transformation.

Since the 1980's until today Clemente 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 in the 1990's 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.

In 1999-2000 at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

In the 2000's at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, at the Museo MADRE, Naples and at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.

An exhibition of selfportraits and of Clemente's own version of the Tarot Cards was held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence in 2011.

Francesco Clemente is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in New York and Varanasi, India.

Shows

Major retrospectives of Clemente's oeuvre have been held in the in the 1990s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Royal Academy in London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo.

In 1999-2000 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

In the 2000s Clemente showed at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, at the Museo MADRE in Naples, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Uffizi Gallery in Florence and at Yale Museum of Art in 2013.

The artist is currently represented by Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland and BlainSouthern in London.

Personal life

Clemente is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in New York and Varanasi, India.

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^[3]., 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

Works

A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows^[4]
Bestiary
Map Is 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

References

^ "Francesco Clemente in Conversation with Alex Bacon". Brooklyn Rail. May 2013.
^ [1] Biography, Francesco Clemente
^ "Francesco Clemente in Philadelphia Museum of Art". Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ "A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows". Retrieved 2012=03-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ "A Coversation by Derek Walcott" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ ^a ^b "Being Francesco Clemente" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ "The Twenty-Four Indian Miniatures" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ "A conversation with artist Francesco Clemente". Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

External links

Template:Persondata

[1] "Francesco Clemente in Conversation with Alex Bacon". Brooklyn Rail. May 2013.

[Italica-2] [1] Biography, Francesco Clemente

[Francesco_Clemente_in_Philadelphia_Museum_of_Art-3] "Francesco Clemente in Philadelphia Museum of Art". Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[A_History_of_the_Heart_in_Three_Rainbows-4] "A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows". Retrieved 2012=03-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[A_Conversation_by_Derek_Walcott-5] "A Coversation by Derek Walcott" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[Being_Francesco_Clemente-6] "Being Francesco Clemente" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[The_Twenty-Four_Indian_Miniatures-7] "The Twenty-Four Indian Miniatures" (PDF). Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[A_conversation_with_artist_Francesco_Clemente-8] "A conversation with artist Francesco Clemente". Retrieved 2012=03-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

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