Francesco Clemente

Catalogue entry

P07905 Self Portrait No.6 (Stoplight) 1981

Softground etching 9 1/4 × 13 1/4 (235 × 337) on paper 16 × 20 1/4 (405 × 515) watermarked ‘ARCHES’, printed by Hidekatsu Takada at Crown Point Press, Oakland, California, published by them in an edition of 10
Inscribed ‘Francesco Clemente’ bottom centre and ‘1/10’; impressed with the printer's and publisher's stamp
Purchased from Crown Point Press (Grant-in-Aid) 1983

These two etchings [P07904 and P07905] are from a group of 21 made at Kathan Brown's Crown Point Press studio in California; they were Clemente's first etchings. The group included six self portraits and three large prints in a vertical, banner-like format. Clemente drew directly on the plates, working from one point in the image outwards, not standing back to consider or correcting his drawing, but pursuing an intuitive form of expression. In P07904 he used a large plate (the plate mark being beyond the edge of the sheet) with a small rectangular plate at the centre. Clemente's imagery is autobiographical, from the mundane details of daily life to the central core of his physical and sexual persona; his pantheistic, pan-cultural outlook is frequently concentrated into images of his own face and body with imagery drawn from Hindu or Tantric art, as in P07905 where his hands are placed palms outwards in a classic Hindu gesture.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986

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