"I think of the images that you find in my paintings as images that are moving. My paintings are crossing points for images."
Francesco Clemente was born in Naples, Italy in 1957. Labelled a Neo-Expressionist, Clemente has also transcended that definition to become one of the best known of the contemporary artists.
Much of his work makes people uncomfortable because it focuses on sexual aberrations, body parts and orifices. However, he links his artistic expression to Hinduism and the close relationship between filth and purity. He was raised in a cultured atmosphere of the classics and traditional approaches to the arts, but as an artist, he reflected the burgeoning Neo-Expressionist movement in watercolor, oil and pastels.
He lived in Naples until he was eighteen and then studied architecture at the University of Rome before moving to New York City in 1981. However, he also paints regularly in India and Italy. In addition to the 1980 Venice Biennale, he has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The first retrospective of his work is at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York from October 1999 to January 2000.
click here to view more paintings
created:
by arsenia989
on April 19, 2001
how's my page?
biography taken from the archives of askART.com
