Francesco Clemente

Francesco Clemente, who enlivened the New York art scene in the 1980s along with a handful of other image-conscious Italians, including Sandra Chia, is said to be a reclusive artist who guards his privacy, but this richly informative book makes that assertion difficult to believe. Clemente himself has always offered a good deal of autobiography to his viewers, with works that have explored his own visage (and other parts) with relentless interest and introspection. And now comes Francesco Clemente, filled with intimate pictures shot by his friend Luca Babini in Clemente studios from New York to New Mexico to Naples. Packed to bursting, the photographs show Clemente working away, with wife, kids, and dogs in tow. With its pictorial richness--paint-spattered floors, trampled rags, stacked canvases, raw-edged, unstretched paintings stapled to huge walls, encrusted studio shoes, and scores of photographs of works in progress--this book will be devoured by other artists, who will turn the pages in a lather of envy, not necessarily for Clemente's fame and success, but for the huge windows and high ceilings of his various work spaces.