Beschreibung:

Francesco Clemente Tools 1997 Oil on canvas. 46 x 92 1/8 in. (116.8 x 234 cm).
Provenance Gagosian Gallery, New York Exhibited New York, Gagosian Gallery, Francesco Clemente Anamorphosis, May 1 - June 14, 1997 Literature R. Foye, ed., Francesco Clemente Anamorphosis, New York, 1997, n.p. (illustrated); L. Wei, “Francesco Clemente at Gagosian- New York, New York, Review of Exhibitions- Brief Article”, Art in America, November, 1997 Catalogue Essay In 1997 Clemente exhibited a series of six paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. These works became know as the Anamorphosis series. Anamorphosis describes a technique of distorted projection and perspective playing. Tools is one of these six canvases to which Clemente has applied this process of oblique re-forming. To capture the painted scenery in its three dimensionality he forces the viewer to observe the image from a low ankle so that the averting hand is placed above oneself and that the fiercefully focused eyes of the bold head are starring straight through. Tools presents a color palette travelling through “pastel—rose , pale blue, yellows, greens [and] warm grays—sweet tones with a little black used for ballast, mostly in the large eyes and fierce brows...The paint is dry, powdery, matte, pressed onto the surface, but its velvety texture is broken by the weave of the canvas. Clemente is a sensual ascetic or an ascetic sensualist, and his face as depicted here—with its distinctive brows that almost meet, opaque irises in eyes outlined in black, exaggeratedly full lips and a shadow of a beard-- combines both aspects seeming at once beautiful and ugly, refined and brutish, benign and harsh. Expressing a range of personas, [Tools] assumes the hieratic aspect of Byzantine icons, African masks or Egyptian portraits…” (Lilly Wei, “Francesco Clemente at Gagosian” - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions, Art in America, November, 1997) Read More