Francesco Clemente
For me, art is like sailing under an ever-changing sky
«When I started painting, I lost the friendship of my best friend, Alighiero Boetti»
Francesco Clemente is one of the most captivating figures in contemporary art. A hybrid creature where spirituality, poetry, painting, mysticism, metaphysics, and philosophy coexist, more or less peacefully. This complex yet exciting universe lands for a few months at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the venue for a tribute exhibition titled Anima Nomade. After all, there is no figure more nomadic than Francesco Clemente in today’s art world. Originally from Naples, he has traveled the world in search of inspiration and of himself. From Afghanistan, visited with Alighiero Boetti, to the beloved India, which he chose as his soul’s land and a continuous source of inspiration; from the Mediterranean to New York, which became his home in the 1980s when he collaborated with friends Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In Rome, Clemente presents a journey told through a unique installation that spans each room of the museum’s main floor. On display until March 30, there are environmental works created specifically for the exhibition, focusing on the artist’s intimate connection with Eastern culture. For Clemente, spirituality is not just a theme to explore, but a true root from which emerges a dense material full of meanings and iconographic images of great refinement. The Roman exhibition unveils the artist’s evolution, considered one of the fathers of Transavanguardia, beginning with the Tents created in 2013, never before exhibited until now, and continuing with the series of large wall drawings specially created for this Roman exhibition, reflecting on the idea of the artist’s nomadic soul. More than an exhibition, Anima Nomade is an immersive experience, a real journey through the sensitivity of one of the most influential artists on the contemporary scene, who has made art a marvelous tool for knowledge and transformation. We at Say Who had the chance to meet the artist in Rome, right within the spaces of Via Nazionale, where we photographed and interviewed him almost surrounded by his works.
You are considered one of the main figures of the Transavanguardia, when painting was once again affirmed as a reaction to immaterial avant-garde. How do you remember this change?
Francesco Clemente :
«When I started painting, I lost the friendship of my best friend, Alighiero Boetti, who had brought the legendary gallerist Sperone to my studio for the first time. It was very painful. With Boetti, we reconnected with warmth and affection only twelve years later, when, unfortunately, he was already seriously ill»
Travel has always been an important part of your life as an artist. Do you consider art a form of travel?
Francesco Clemente :
«Yes. Art is a bit like sailing under an ever-changing sky»
What is the last work of art (or book, film, or song) that transported you to a different place?
Francesco Clemente :
«Notturno the film shot in the territories of the Caliphate, along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon, by Italian director Gianfranco Rosi in 2020»
He was born in Naples 72 years ago. Would he move back to live in his hometown?
Francesco Clemente :
«I’ll answer you exactly as a drunken homeless man shouted to me, camped out in Rome under the gasometer, spotting my old car with a Naples license plate: ‘Naples is everywhere!!’»
The journey through the Rome exhibition immerses visitors in a totalizing, metaphysical, and mystical aesthetic landscape, marked by the representation of the self. If the faces in your works could speak, what would they say?
Francesco Clemente :
«Relax!»
In an old interview, you said that ‘If you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force or cunning. And neither of these ‘virtues’ is suitable for an artist.’ Do you still hold the same opinion?
Francesco Clemente :
«Once I painted the Palio of Siena. In Siena, they explained to me that the goal of the race is not to win, but to make your enemy lose…».
Interview: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Niccolò Campita
