Francesco Clemente: Between Cultures and Identity

Francesco Clemente

b. 1952 | Italian/American | Tempera, Watercolours, Oils

Born in Naples, Clemente now lives in New York. He is one of the most respected members of the current art establishment. He is prolific, producing large and small works. His work is the epitome of official contemporary art.

Clemente creates both large-scale works and smaller ones. He explores dual themes that are the most fashionable of the moment: the relationship between the past and present, the human and the animal. Europe and America, man and woman. His works draw on a wide variety of impeccable source material: Italian Renaissance, Indian art. Clemente is technically very sound and intellectually complex, with much symbolic content.

With such correct, self-assured, firmly constructed art, it is difficult to find fault. But why are the faces, eyes, and imagery in general so sad and melancholic? The work sometimes risks becoming passions. Why the obsession with genitalia? It seems like joyless self-indulgence—serious, solemn, and oddly not erotic. Yet it is the sort of art that public institutions want.

Head Francesco Clemente, 1983–84, watercolor on paper, 39 × 53 in. (99 × 135 cm).

Francesco Clemente, "Actors of the Terreiro XIX," 2006. Watercolor on paper, 24 x 18".

Key Works:Tondo, 1981 (New York: Museum of Modern Art);Amman, 1982 (Zurich: Thomas Ammann Fine Art)