Francesco Clemente

Art Brokerage: Francesco Clemente Italian artist: B. 1952. Francesco Clemente was born in Naples in 1952, where he spent his childhood and adolescence in close contact with seventeenth century art. After finishing secondary school, he taught himself painting and began to write and publish poetry. In 1970 he moved to Rome to attend the faculty of Architecture and met a number of artists including Cy Twombly and Alighiero Boetti, who influenced his initial artistic work. He held his first personal exhibition at the Galleria di Valle Giulia in Rome, then went to India, where he opened a studio in the city of Madras. In 1979 he joined the Transavantgarde movement, theorised by the critic Achille Bonito Oliva, and became one of its leading exponents together with Chucchi, Chia, De Maria and Paladino, with whom he put on an exhibition in Cologne. From the 1980s onwards he achieved major international success at a time in history when artists were reacting against the dominant conceptual movement. He created a series inspired by the stations of the cross, produced numerous books, a collection of photographs of architecture and a group of miniatures painted in collaboration with the Indian artists of Madras. He frequently puts on personal exhibitions in Europe and in the United States. The one held in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna is a foretaste of the major exhibition that the Guggenheim Museum in New York will be devoting to him next autumn. Listings wanted.