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Francesco Clemente

Francesco Clemente

Italian artist Francesco Clemente circumvented higher education in art, instead using his intrepid curiosity and penchant for travel to enrich his natural talent. Born in Naples in 1952, Clemente moved to Rome where he adopted Alighero Boetti and Luigi Ontani as mentors. By using traditional materials to explore the innate expression found in the human body, Clemente rebelled against the more popular aesthetic of the 1960s and 1970s, led by the Conceptualists. His work at the 1980 Venice Bienalle garnered him international attention and led to a revival of Expressionism, a movement pioneered by masters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin. His final inspiration came after relocating to New York in the early eighties and collaborating with the era’s most celebrated artists, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Clemente also sites poets Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley as inspiration.

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