Francesco Clemente - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • 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)

52

Tools

1997
Oil on canvas.
46 x 92 1/8 in. (116.8 x 234 cm).

Estimate
£120,000 - 180,000 

Sold for £120,000

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London