Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall
On October 29, L茅vy Gorvy Dayan will open Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall, marking the venerated artist鈥檚 first exhibition at the gallery鈥檚 Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street. Here, across multiple floors, Clemente will debut recent large-scale paintings in oil, watercolors, and frescoes, demonstrating his engagement with form and material鈥攁nd melding artistic influences from India, West Africa, Egypt, and Italy to classical Greece and Rome. The subject of his new work is grounded in introspection and personal connection, echoing the expression penned by William Blake, 鈥淟ove, the human form divine.鈥�
Created during the warm and lush summer months, Clemente鈥檚 representations in oil of amorous love and the erotic impulse are intimate yet universal, addressing physical and emotional connection. His earthen, pared-down palette emphasizes metallic hues of gold and silver, while also referencing the pictorial traditions of the Italian trecento and Renaissance鈥攖he dry grays of Giotto and the cool greens of Fra Angelico. The paintings are populated with figurative iconography, including that of angels, and resonant themes of spirituality and sexuality.
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On October 29, L茅vy Gorvy Dayan will open Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall, marking the venerated artist鈥檚 first exhibition at the gallery鈥檚 Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street. Here, across multiple floors, Clemente will debut recent large-scale paintings in oil, watercolors, and frescoes, demonstrating his engagement with form and material鈥攁nd melding artistic influences from India, West Africa, Egypt, and Italy to classical Greece and Rome. The subject of his new work is grounded in introspection and personal connection, echoing the expression penned by William Blake, 鈥淟ove, the human form divine.鈥�
Created during the warm and lush summer months, Clemente鈥檚 representations in oil of amorous love and the erotic impulse are intimate yet universal, addressing physical and emotional connection. His earthen, pared-down palette emphasizes metallic hues of gold and silver, while also referencing the pictorial traditions of the Italian trecento and Renaissance鈥攖he dry grays of Giotto and the cool greens of Fra Angelico. The paintings are populated with figurative iconography, including that of angels, and resonant themes of spirituality and sexuality.
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Since seeing his retrospective at the Guggenheim some 25 years ago, I have considered Clemente the most inventive living figurative artist. He reinvented the varied subjects of his painting as he went along, and he has continued to do so with strikingly original new works.
Balance: between form and formlessness, the personal and the universal, the temporal and the eternal.
