Francesco Clemente Crown

cm 213,5 x 1029

After studying architecture in Rome and lengthy stays in India during the 1970s, Francesco Clemente rose to prominence as part of the neo-expressionist Transavanguardia group, on the occasion of the “Aperto ’80” exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann and Achille Bonito Oliva for the 39th Venice Biennale. The following year he moved to New York, where he came into contact with the avant-garde art scene, and the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In those years he explored figuration in painting and drawing, media which feature constantly in his work. His main areas of interest were the human figure, the body, and the selfportrait, key subjects in the artist’s whole output. "Crown", the large triptych Clemente painted in 1988, refers to the central theme of the image: standing out against the dark background are signs and webs that evoke a crown of thorns, symbol of the Passion of Christ. As is often the case in the artist’s work, the painting does however contain multiple visual sources and different iconographic references: the web, the color, and the horizontal format in this work also refer to the concept of Tantric “weaving” and to the spiritual culture of New Mexico, which the painter became interested in following a trip to the state in 1986. As the artist himself declares: “In my painting there is also a weaving aspect, and my encounter with India was an encounter with Tantra. Tantra means weaving, it is the image of consciousness as an embroidery of full and empty elements.” The work is of particular importance in Clemente’s path as an artist, in that the symbolic and no longer strictly figurative element replaced the theme of the human figure prevalent in his work until then. From now on, in fact, the artist would concentrate on rendering the spiritual dimension through iconographic references to Eastern aniconic culture interwoven with ones from the Western figurative tradition.

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T. Shinoda, H. Geldzahler (eds.), Francesco Clemente. Two Horizons, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo, Sezon Museum of Art), Tokyo 1994. Conversazione tra Francesco Clemente, Danilo Eccher e Francesco Pellizzi, in D. Eccher (ed.), Francesco Clemente: opere su carta, exhibition catalogue (Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Moderna – Villa delle Rose), Turin 1999, p. 78. E. Cicelyn, M. Codognato (eds.), Francesco Clemente, exhibition catalogue (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale), Naples 2002. P. Colombo (ed.), Francesco Clemente, exhibition catalogue (Rome, MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo), Milan 2006. A. Bonito Oliva (ed.), Francesco Clemente: frontiera di immagini, exhibition catalogue (Palermo, Palazzo Sant’Elia), Milan 2013.

Foto Roberto Galasso

Purchased from Galleria Lorcan O'Neill, Rome

Painting