LONDON.- Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents Francesco Clemente’s Self-Portraits in the Bardo—a significant series from his recent practice on view for the first time. In eight vivid and visionary canvases, the artist fuses self-portraiture with an exploration of the imagery found in traditional Tibetan Buddhist representations of the bardo. The bardo is a central concept in Tibetan Buddhism, describing a liminal state of consciousness associated with the moment between death and rebirth. The awe-inspiring figures seen in Clemente’s paintings draw on the sacred peacefiul and wrathfiul deities that inhabit this non-corporeal space—given life by Clemente in his vibrant compositions.

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The history and texts of Tibetan Buddhism are important sources of inspiration for the artist. Since the 1970s, he has traveled extensively, particularly in India and Tibet, studying the regions’ literatures, cosmologies, and iconographies. The bardo is a crucial stage in the cycle of life for many Tibetan Buddhist schools. It describes the intermediate state between death and rebirth, and similar experiences of transition that may occur throughout life. Yet, just as the bardo offers the opportunity for enlightenment, it can also pose a danger to the unwary—with deities wielding power to both assist and confuse on the journey to the next life.

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Clemente has said that “the bardo is a place in between lives, but the bardo is also a place in between affirmation[s] of being.” Recounting an experience he had at the age of nineteen, Clemente notes perceiving “a gap, an absolute emptiness” before the recurrence of “the simple feeling ‘I am’.” For the artist, the bardo, in this sense, is a fundamental part of experiencing life and identity. He has approached the idea throughout his oeuvre, most notably in his self-portraits, which he has described as “homage[s] to the bardo”—reflecting an idea of self that is not static but discontinuous and metamorphic.

In Self-Portraits in the Bardo, the themes of self-portraiture and the bardo are definitively brought together by the artist. On each canvas, Clemente creates a contrast between his grisaille self-portrait in the foreground and the richly hued space of the background. The deities of the bardo manifest in kaleidoscopic arrangements of form and color. Powerful and impressive in opulent tones of ochre, umber, orange, red, and pink, they occupy the space of the canvas, reminders of the sublime nature of enlightenment and mortality.

Self-Portraits in the Bardo reflects Clemente’s decades-long engagement with the idea of the bardo as an ancient model of conceiving life and death. The paintings revel in details, from the ornate attire of the deities to the small shifts in the artist’s facial expressions—the latter rendered in deft grisaille, a recurring technique in Clemente’s oeuvre. As celebrations of age-old desires for spiritual guidance and deliverance, these works are also expressions of contemporary life—its joys and difficulties—and testify to Clemente’s belief in art as a unique vehicle for insight and enlightenment.

Self-Portraits in the Bardo marks the gallery’s third solo presentation of Clemente in London, and the first in the new space at the Empress Club, 35 Dover Street. The exhibition is accompanied by an essay by Sir Norman Rosenthal.

The artist

For more than six decades, Francesco Clemente has forged a singular career that seeks intercultural resonance, addressing the philosophical dualities of mind and body, freedom and constraint, and part and whole. In paintings, prints, frescoes, photography, book editions, and installations, he nurtures a signature poetic intensity, using metaphor and symbolism to consider the nature of the self. Dividing his time between New York, Chennai (formerly Madras) and Varanasi, India, Clemente is inspired by the Tantra traditions of India and Tibet, Beat poetry, the ritualism of Joseph Beuys, and Greco-Roman art. His frequently collaborative practice has been linked to the Italian Transavanguardia group of the late 1970s as well as New York’s concurrent neo-expressionism. Clemente frequently turns to portraiture and has painted, among others, Jean- Michel Basquiat, Toni Morrison, and Jasper Johns.

Born in Naples, Italy, in 1952, Clemente studied architecture at the Sapienza University of Rome. Following his participation in the 1980 Venice Biennale, he was critically lauded as a leader of the “return to figuration.” In 1ç81, with his wife Alba, he relocated to downtown Manhattan, where he collaborated with such figures as Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Rene Ricard. He founded the imprint Hanuman Books with
Raymond Foye in 1986, and in 1998, he created the portraits that were featured in Alfonso Cuarón’s film Great Expectations. Since he was nineteen, the artist has spent significant time in India, studying Sanskrit, literature, and collaborating with local artisans.

In 2002, Clemente was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Major retrospectives of the artist’s work have been organized by the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota (1985–87), which traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dallas Museum of Art; University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art (1990), traveling to the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris (1994); Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (1994); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1999), traveling to Guggenheim Bilbao and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2011); Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2014); and Palazzo Esposizioni Rome (2024).
Clemente’s work is featured in prominent museum collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Miami Art Museum; Kunstmuseum Basel; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.