Following Francesco Clemente's highly successful retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York a year ago, this suite of 30 new watercolours painted in New Orleans; Oaxaca, Mexico; and Tanjore, India, offers a change of pace.

As Agnes Martin had sought solitude and inspiration away from art and society, Clemente has always spent long periods travelling and living in different cultural milieus in different parts of the world, from India and Afghanistan to Mexico. He has said: My travelling has been connected to the idea that in each place where I was, the continuity of memories, the tradition of the place, has been broken, somewhere, sometime; I don't know why. Really, you can't look at any place in the world from the place itself. You have to look from somewhere else to see what is there.

Watercolours are highly portable, they can be made anywhere. But though the place may provide impetus and image, the viewpoint is specifically grounded in the artist himself. The train of thought starts here. That these works are made from the simple elements of water, paper, pigment, and the movement of the artist's hand also seems to be part of the subject of the work. Like jewels they glow and seem to be alive because they are activated by light, the light that shines though the water and pigment. Their genesis is both magic and manifest.

The literally fluid, emblematic images are simple and universal, part of a familiar vocabulary. They also emphasise the other tools of the painter: the eye, the chemistry of colour, the science of optics, the alchemy of the imagination. The importance of light and optics in this series is heightened by the translucency and prismatic fragmentation of many of the images. The theme of strength within fragility and vulnerability is also echoed by the theme of the lighted candle, the reflective luminous eyes in several self-portraits, the pulsating heart, the rose, the cage of thorns, the sun and the bird. Like the frames of a film, the images seem to metamorphose as the series unfolds, slipping from one state of existence to another.

Born in 1952, Francesco Clemente can be found in New York, New Mexico, India or Italy. Once seen as part of Italy's Transavantguardia group in the 1980s, Clemente is now arguably the country's most important and respected living painter.

A beautiful notebook containing reproductions of works from the exhibition will be on sale during the exhibition.


For further information and images, please contact Jennifer Thatcher

Tel: 020 7499 4100 Fax: 020 7493 4443 email: jennifer_thatcher@doffay.com


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