Pas de Deux III, Alex Katz, 1983

Francesco and Alba Clemente

Born in Naples, Italy in 1952, Francesco Clemente has been said to be one of the most gifted artists of the second half of the twentieth Century.  Since the 1970s, Clemente has produced a rich and complex body of artwork.  His expressive portrayal of the human body and use of traditional materials departed radically from the Conceptualist aesthetic that dominated the late 1960s and 1970s.  An avid traveler, he has diversified his imagery, engaging a wide range of cultural traditions and stylistic sources through his travels to Italy, India, and New York, as well as the American Southwest and Caribbean.
Drawn to the ethnic and cultural diversity of New York, Clemente and his family moved permanently to the city in 1981.  He immediately integrated himself into a community of painters, graffiti artists, composers, musicians, filmmakers, poets, and critics.  He painted portraits of many of these figures and even collaborated on a group of paintings with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 
In 1998, Clemente was chosen to create all of the original artwork featured in the modern movie version of the classic “Great Expectations,” featuring Robert De Nero, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ethan Hawke.  In late 1999 into early 2000, Clemente became the youngest artist ever to receive a full museum show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum at the age of 47.  Titled, Clemente, this exhibit was the first comprehensive career retrospective spanning 25 years of his career.  His most recent and most compelling piece in the exhibit was a painting of his wife seductively lying on her side wearing a bold red gown, which is simply titled, Alba, 1997.
His wife Alba was an Italian stage and television star in the 1970s. In December of 1994, Alba Clemente starred in a Rene Ricard rendition of the 1930s French monologue, A Human Voice, a one-sided phone conversation depicting a break-up with her lover.

Alex Katz, Pas de Deux 3, 1983, serigraph, paper/image size: 36 x 20 inches.