Francesco Clemente | |
---|---|
Born | Naples, Italy | 23 March 1952
Education | Architecture (University of Rome) |
Known for | painting, drawing, book publishing |
Patron(s) | Hanuman Books |
Website | francescoclemente |
Francesco Clemente (born 23 March 1952) is an Italian contemporary artist and book publisher. He has lived and worked at various times in Italy, India and New York City. Some of his work is influenced by the traditional art and culture of India. [1] He has worked in various artistic media including drawing, fresco, graphics, mosaic, oils and sculpture. [2] He was among the principal figures in the Italian Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s, which was characterized by a rejection of Formalism and conceptual art and a return to figurative art and Symbolism. [3] He was the co-publisher of Hanuman Books from 1986 to 1993.
Clemente was born in 1952 in Naples, in Campania in southern Italy. In 1970 he enrolled in the faculty of architecture of the Sapienza, the university of Rome, but did not complete a degree there. [3] In Rome he came into contact with contemporary artists such as Luigi Ontani and Alighiero Boetti, who had come to the city at about the same time, [4] and also with the American Cy Twombly, who lived there. [1] Boetti, who was ten years older, became both a friend and a mentor; in 1974 they visited Afghanistan together. [5] With Ontani, Clemente gave performances at the Galleria L'Attico. [6] Despite his close involvement with these artists associated with the Arte povera movement, and his interest in others such as Pino Pascali and Michelangelo Pistoletto, Clemente preferred to work on paper. He made ink drawings of dreams and recollections of his childhood, and in 1971, in his first solo show, exhibited collages at the Galleria Giulia in Rome. [1]
In 1973 Clemente made the first of many visits to India. [1] He established a studio in Madras (now Chennai), [2] and became interested in both the religious and folk traditions of India and in the traditional art and crafts of the country. In 1976 and 1977 he visited the library of the Theosophical Society of Madras to study the religious texts there. [3] In 1980 and 1981 he worked on Francesco Clemente Pinxit, a series of twenty-four gouaches on antique hand-made rag paper, in collaboration with miniature painters from Orissa and Jaipur. [1] [3] [7] : 88 In 1982 he moved to New York City. [8] . He lives in Greenwich Village. [9]
Clemente's work has been widely shown. His early large canvases, painted in 1981–1982, were exhibited in 1983 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and then in Germany and Sweden. [1] In 1986 the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, mounted a travelling exhibition of his work. [3] Clemente participated in the Biennale di Venezia in 1988, 1993, 1995 and 1997; in documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1992 and 1997; and in the Whitney Biennial, also in 1997. [2] Solo shows were held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1990; at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1991; [10] at the Sezon Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in 1994; at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Bologna in 1999; at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000; at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli in Naples in 2002–2003; at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2004; at Palazzo Sant'Elia in Palermo Sicily in 2013; at both the Coro della Maddalena in Alba and Santa Maria della Scala in Siena Italy in 2016; and at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2017. [2] [3]
In 1998 his work was used in the film Great Expectations , directed by Alfonso Cuarón. [3]
In 2024, Clemente collaborated with Swiss chef Daniel Humm to design and open Clemente Bar, a plant-based cocktail and tasting lounge that features original large-scale works by the artist. The bar is located within Humm’s other property, Eleven Madison Park in New York City. [11]
The highest selling painting by the artist was The Fourteen Stations, No. XI (1981-1982) who sold by $1,860,000 at Christie's New York, at 9 May 2022. [12]
Achille Bonito Oliva is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemporary artists. He originated the term Transavanguardia to describe the new direction taken in the late 1970s by artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino. He has organised or curated numerous contemporary art events and exhibitions; in 1993 he was artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia.
Arte Povera was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are Milan, Rome, Genoa, Venice, Naples and Bologna. The term was coined by Italian art critic Germano Celant in 1967 and introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture.
Jennifer Anne Saville is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. Saville works and lives in Oxford, England and she is known for her large-scale painted depictions of nude women. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Some paintings are of small dimensions, while other are of much larger scale. Monumental subjects come from pathology textbooks that she has studied that informed her on injury to bruise, burns, and deformity. John Gray commented: "As I see it, Jenny Saville's work expresses a parallel project of reclaiming the body from personality. Saville worked with many models who underwent cosmetic surgery to reshape a portion of their body. In doing that, she captures "marks of personality for the flesh" and together embraces how we can be the writers of our own lives."
Jannis Kounellis was a Greek Italian artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.
Germano Celant was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" in the 1967 Flash Art piece "Appunti Per Una Guerriglia", which would become the manifesto for the Arte Povera artistic and political movement. He wrote many articles and books on the subject.
The Gagosian Gallery is a modern and contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibition spaces – including New York City, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong – designed by architects such as Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf.
Flash Art is a contemporary art magazine, and an Italian and international publishing house. Originally published bilingually, both in Italian and in English, since 1978 is published in two separate editions, Flash Art Italia (Italian) and Flash Art International (English). Since September 2020, the magazine is seasonal, and said editions are published four times a year.
Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti, known as Alighiero e Boetti was an Italian conceptual artist, considered to be a member of the art movement Arte Povera.
Sandro Chia is an Italian painter and sculptor. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was, with Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino, a principal member of the Italian Neo-Expressionist movement which was baptised Transavanguardia by Achille Bonito Oliva.
Piero Golia is a conceptual artist based in Los Angeles.
Art & Project was a leading contemporary art gallery by Geert van Beijeren & Adriaan van Ravesteijn from 1968 to 2001 in Amsterdam and Slootdorp, the Netherlands, as well as an influential art magazine published by the gallery between 1968 and 1989.
MAXXI is a national museum of contemporary art and architecture in the Flaminio neighborhood of Rome, Italy. The museum is managed by a foundation created by the Italian ministry of cultural heritage. The building was designed by Zaha Hadid, and won the Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2010.
Randi Malkin Steinberger is an American photographer, documentary filmmaker, and author.
Francesco Vezzoli is an Italian artist and filmmaker.
Giovanni Anselmo was an Italian artist, who emerged after World War II within the art movement called Arte Povera. His most famous artwork is Untitled (1968), a piece of art representing time and nature.
Valentina Moncada di Paternò is an Italian art historian, gallery owner, and curator who specializes in contemporary art. In 1990 she opened an art gallery in Rome in Via Margutta 54, establishing herself as a talent scout due to a program of young international artists who soon became known worldwide.
The Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna is the museum of modern and contemporary art of the city of Rome, Italy. It is housed in a former Barefoot Carmelite monastery dating from the 17th century and adjacent to the church of San Giuseppe a Capo le Case, at 24 Via Francesco Crispi.
Jonas Wood is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles.
Artiscope is a Brussels art gallery specialized in contemporary American and European artists. Artiscope Gallery has organized exhibitions in collaboration with many museums in Belgium and Germany.
Enrico Corte is an Italian contemporary artist. He works in the fields of painting, sculpture, drawing, video art and photography. His exhibitions often include multimedia installations that mix diverse genres and form relationships both with the surrounding area and the viewing public by means of ever-changing combinations. He has lived for extended periods of time in Rome, London, Berlin, Paris and New York, always immersing himself in the contemporary culture and assimilating the tensions of the metropolitan counter-cultures. His works can be found in both private and public collections in Europe and the USA.