Francesco Clemente

1952, Naples, Italy

A cosmopolitan and visionary artist, Francesco Clemente is a central figure of the Italian Transavanguardia. His work is distinguished by an extraordinary cultural and spiritual openness, developed through extended periods spent in India, New York and Southern Italy. Deeply narrative and symbolic, his painting combines ancient myths, Eastern spirituality, eroticism and personal memory in a fluid, dreamlike and often autobiographical visual language.

Clemente has collaborated with poets and musicians and explored Indian miniature painting, watercolour, fresco and large-scale painting on canvas. His artistic vision is nomadic, moving across languages and geographies through a continuous encounter between body, mind and imagination. His works are held in major museums worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou.

Francesco Clemente

Napoli e’ xiii 2017/2018
46x61 cm

In this delicate watercolour, Clemente pays tribute to his native city with irony, affection and symbolism. Against a classical view of the Gulf of Naples, rendered almost in the tradition of landscape view painting, two crossed arms display the horn gesture, a Neapolitan symbol traditionally believed to ward off misfortune. Below, an enormous red horn floats on the water like an ancient and popular talisman, both sacred and profane.

The work embodies the essence of Clemente’s practice: his ability to combine high and popular culture, tradition and contemporaneity, mysticism and irony. Naples is not merely the subject of the image, but a psychological and mythological place, evoked with affection and painterly freedom.