FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
Fragments of Now at Vito Schnabel Gallery
Francesco Clemente is a contemporary Italian artist who was one of the key figures in the Italian Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s. From April 16 to May 15, 2021, the Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition Francesco Clemente: Fragments of Now, which presents a new body of work by the artist who lives and works in New York, Chennai (formerly Madras), and Varanasi, India.
Francesco Clemente was born in Naples in 1952 and has lived and worked in Italy, India, and New York City. Before focusing on art, he pursued a career in architecture. Clemente studied at the Università degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza in Rome in 1970, but did not finish the degree. He was introduced to some contemporary artists from the Arte povera movement but chose to go in a different creative direction. The Italian Transavanguardia movement, which he represented, rejected Formalism and Conceptual art and sought to return to figurative art and symbolism.
He has worked in multiple mediums, including drawing, fresco, graphics, mosaic, oils, and sculpture. His work is in the collections of major institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Miami Art Museum; Kunstmuseum Basel; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and New York, etc., and in 2002, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Clemente found inspiration in Homer’s Iliad (one of the most critical pieces of literature in Western culture; it describes the Trojan War as a conflict between humans and gods) for nine monumental canvases. All are featured in the show. Each depicts an archetypal Corinthian helmet accompanied by a fragment of Homer’s poem. At first glance, they all appear quite similar. Still, each is slightly different in a specific way, as the excerpts he chooses to include are “related to the cycles and rhythms of nature’s enduring permanence, a poignant contrast to the brutality and vagaries of battle and conflict,” as stated in the press release. He explores spirituality, identity, mysticism, and self in his works. He is influenced by history, mythology, philosophy, and literature. Travel has always been one of Clemente’s most important sources of inspiration, through which he explores different cultures and spiritual practices. He has stated that: “I have great interest in the encounter of very ancient ways of imagining and storytelling with contemporary realities. In a way I am always looking for that distance, a way to see the present as remote.” About the helmets depicted in the works from Fragments of Now, he states that they portray a meeting of “culture and nature.” It is “an organ of the body grown out of necessity. It is also a relic on a battlefield. It is an empty head, void of activity, a shell abandoned by its inhabitant.”
Fragments of Now is Clemente’s fourth exhibition with the Vito Schnabel Gallery and is on view until May 15, 2021, at the gallery’s 455 West 19th Street location.
