LOVE by Francesco Clemente depicts two mirrored figures with cloud-shaped heads, each seemingly contemplating the reflection of their own selves in the other. Known throughout his career for his examination of themes surrounding spirituality, sexuality and the human condition, LOVE explores ideas of self-regard and admiration. He raises a question so key to our age: is our self-image and self-esteem completely reliant on our need for affirmation from others? As he writes, “I indicate with my work the fact that we have a fragmented self and I’m interested in the gaps that separate all our different personas.”

Born in Naples from where he moved to Rome to study, Francesco Clemente worked alongside Alghiero Boetti, Cy Twombly, and Pistoletto, before travelling to Afghanistan and India and eventually settling in New York where he collaborated with Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat. Despite his close association with artists particularly of the Transavanguardia, his work stands apart and he has always remained an international nomadic artist of many cultures, capable of assimilating everything around him, aligning himself only with the lyrical representation of nature and symbol laden evocations of deeply interior states. His work conveys an uncanny and unabashed intimacy, despite often being large in scale. Clemente’s work has been widely shown internationally. His early large canvases, painted in 1981–1982, were exhibited in 1983 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and then in Germany and Sweden. In 1986 the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, mounted a travelling exhibition of his work. Clemente participated in the Biennale di Venezia in 1988, 1993, 1995 and 1997; in documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1992 and 1997; and in the Whitney Biennial, also in 1997. Solo shows were held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1990; at the Sezon Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in 1994; at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Bologna in 1999; at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000; at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli in Naples in 2002–2003; at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2004; at Palazzo Sant’Elia in Palermo, in Sicily, in 2013; at both the Coro della Maddalena in Alba and Santa Maria della Scala in Siena in 2016; and at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2017. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Albertina Museum, Vienna in 2023. Clemente lives and works in New York and Varanasi, India.