Purple Magazine
— F/W 2010 issue 14

Francesco Clemente

photography by JACK PIERSON
style by PAMELA LOVE

The 1980s saw a revival of big, brash, museum-style painting, one generated by baby-boomer artists like Schnabel, Salle, and Basquiat from the US; Baselitz, Lupertz, and Penck from Germany; Gérard Garouste from France; and the three Cs from Italy’s Transavanguardia: Chia, Cucchi, and Clemente. FRANCESCO CLEMENTE, born in 1952, remains the most prominent member of this group.

Clemente studied literature and architecture, and in the early ’70s he journeyed to India with his artistic mentor, Alighiero Boetti, all of which played an important part in his artistic development. In 1982 he moved to New York, where he showed at galleries such as Mary Boone’s, collaborated with Basquiat and Warhol, and made books with numerous writers and poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Harry Mathews, and Robert Creeley. He even played a hypnotherapist in the movie Good Will Hunting. Since the ’80s there have been exhibitions of Clemente’s work in many of the world’s major galleries and museums, including retrospective exhibitions at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Clemente continues to divide his time between New York and India, and the differences between these two worlds may well have helped determine his style, which is a combination of almost surrealistic figuration with matte, watercolor-or-batik-inspired surfaces on canvas or paper. His Zen-like personal style might also be a result of his experiencing this East-West, materialist/anti-materialist multiculturalism.

We wanted to photograph Francesco in his beautiful New York loft studio, wearing the clothing of his favorite men’s designer, Comme des Garçons.

[Table of contents]

F/W 2010 issue 14

Table of contents

purple EDITO

purple NEWS

purple BEST OF THE SEASON

purple INTERVIEW

purple PORTFOLIO

Purple FASHION WOMEN

purple FASHION MEN

purple NAKED

purple DOCUMENTS

purple PARIS

purple NIGHT

purple VISUAL ESSAY

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