The visit would begin with one of Francesco Clemente's (Naples, 1952) iconic New York Muses, a series that was featured in his portrait exhibition at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in 1997 and exemplifies his transcultural style. Within his body of work, these pastels on paper represent a transition between the male portraits of poets and visual artists from the 1980s and his later portraits of New York high society. These monumental busts of anonymous women with direct gazes embody a mythical vitality, like powerful urban Amazons, both intimate and mysterious at the same time. Two groups of works by the same artist dedicated to his partner and muse Alba, an ideal of beauty and sophistication for other authors as well (from Warhol, Basquiat and Schnabel to Katz and Mapplethorpe, among others), are also on display. Clemente explores sensuality and mysticism, the corporeal and the spiritual, reflecting on desire and a multifaceted, changing identity, from a symbolism with clear Eastern references.
