Francesco Clemente was born in 1952 in Naples, Italy. He went to Rome to study architecture, where he met his friend and mentor Alighiero Boetti and decided to pursue a career in art instead.

Clemente is greatly influenced by mysticism, traditional art and the culture of India. His signature subjects are the human form, particularly women’s bodies, his own image, sexuality, myth, and spirituality, non-western symbols, and dreamlike visions. 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. 

Today, Clemente is considered to be one of the leaders of neo-expressionism. His work is shown and collected by major museums such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York and Bilbao, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern, London.

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