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…