photo by Luca Babini
Having crossed geographies, cultures and different modes of expression, Francesco Clemente embodies the figure of the wandering artist par excellence.
In the course of his career he has used oil painting, fresco, encaustic painting, pastel and watercolour, and devoted time and energy to sculpture. In the 1970s Clemente fostered the return to painting as a significant means of expression.
The artist, who has found inspiration in oriental philosophical, spiritual an aesthetic traditions, depicts in his works a fragmentary ego and figures constantly changing amid different worlds, the material and the spiritual, the male and the female, that aspire to forms of reconciliation.
Before establishing his studio in New York in 1980, Clemente lived in India, devoting his energy to the study of Sanskrit and Hindu and Buddhist literature in the library of the Theosophical Society in the city of Chennai.
In New York he has worked with poets such as Ginsberg and Robert Creeley, and with artists of the calibre of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. In conjunction with Raymond Foye, he established a publishing company named Hanuman Books and has also become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
His work is on display in many prestigious museums throughout the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, the Kunstmuseum in Basel, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao and New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Clemente lives and works between New York and India.