Exhibition - Francesco Clemente - May 9 - June 21, 2003

Francesco Clemente

Paintings 2000 - 2003
May 9 - June 21, 2003

• Press Release
• View Work
• View Catalog
• Artist Info

Download PDF (24 K)

Reception for the artist: Friday, May 9, 2003, 6–8 PM


Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Francesco Clemente. The exhibition will be comprised of works from various series incorporating different techniques including oil on linen, monumental tempera paintings on denim cotton and frescoes on plaster panels. This is Francesco Clemente's first exhibition in New York since his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1999.

Most provocative in the various series of paintings brought together in this exhibition is the near elimination of the human figure, a motif which has been such a signature element in Clemente's previous works. The paintings are infused with a sense of loss, a stoic gratitude and a poetic depiction of time's passage. As Clemente has said in a recent interview, "the nature of painting is to redeem an undercurrent of sadness".

David Rimanelli has written in the catalogue essay:

"Clemente, a painter with a Baudelairean poetic sensibility, parries the shocks of ongoing modernity in these paintings…A wanderer throughout cultures ancient and modern, he is acutely conscious of the evanescence of human triumph and human folly".


A fully illustrated catalogue, including an essay by David Rimanelli, will accompany the exhibition.

For further information please contact the gallery.