Clemente at the Albertina Museum in Vienna has been
inagurated on the occasion of the acquisition by the museum of
the Jablonka Collection, which includes different important
artworks of the artist. Jablonka Collection’s artworks were
joined by others from Albertina’s collections. The exhibition
consists of large cycles of artworks on canvas and paper from
the 80s to the present.
A special focus was devoted to Clemente’s self-portraits, where
impressions and experiences, stories and myths mix together,
clearly visible in his production. He then continues through a
forest of fantastic signs and visions, drawn from Tarot cards and
Jewish Kabbalah or inspired by the imagery of other artists.
The exhibition takes also into consideration the artist’s life and
trips, tracing the time he spent in Italy, India, United States,
where he currently lives, and the impression he has shaped.
Indeed, thanks to his numerous trips, the artist manages to
insert his many sources of inspiration int the Italian artistic
tradition: Eastern philosophies, classical myths, Rudolf Steiner’s
theosophical theories, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich
Nietzsche’s thinking, and the beat poetry of Allen Ginsberg.
As a matter of fact, the artist is characterised by an intellectual
nomadism, which makes him capable of absorbing and
assimilating symbols and stimuli from distant sources, giving life
to a new unmistakable pictorial language.
