Francesco Clemente Italy, b. 1952

Francesco Clemente was born in 1952 in Naples, Italy. He went to Rome to study architecture, where he met friend and mentor Alighiero Boetti who encouraged a career in art. Clemente is considered to be one of the leaders of neo-expressionism. He is greatly influenced by mysticism, traditional art and the culture of India. His subjects––particularly the female form and his own image––explore themes surrounding eroticism, myth, and spirituality, with non-western symbols characterizing his dream-like work.

His work is shown and collected by major institutions including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, MoMA, New York, and Tate Modern, London. His canvases are rife with erotic imagery of mutilated body parts, gestural amorphous figures often depicted in rich colors, as well as a series of contorted self-portraits, conveying an uncanny and unabashed intimacy. Clemente's gouache paintings and pastel drawings are especially noted for their intense and arcane quasi-religious content that has grown increasingly surreal in his later works.

Clemente lives and works in New York and Varanasi, India.