Francesco Clemente - Pirate Heart

Italian artist Francesco Clemente is exhibiting his work in Paris for the first time since 1996. Galerie Templon is presenting a previously unseen series of works that explore the theme of love.

The exhibition features 36 small format paintings and two frescos. In a warm and sensual palette of harmonious colours, women, men, animals and wild geometric shapes intermingle to form a melody that examines the power of love, its meaning, its gender, its sensual explosion. The paintings are rhythmed by Enrique Juncosa’s poems, published in the accompanying catalogue. Now joyful, now tragic, but always enigmatic and erotic, the works will be shown alongside a monumental plaster sculpture entitled simply Love.

Born in Naples in 1952, Francesco Clemente lives and works in New York. A great traveler, the artist regularly goes to Rome, New Mexico and India, where he draws great inspiration. He was one of the main protagonists of the Italian Trans-avant-garde, which gave new life to international figurative painting in the 1980s. Oil or fresco painting, watercolor and pastel, sculptures, books, the artist uses a wide variety of media to explore his favorite themes: spirituality, human identity, the ambivalence of feelings.