Throughout the sensual relationship that Francesco Clemente (born 1952) has cultivated with paper surfaces runs the idea of the palimpsest—the manuscript page or parchment, often torn from a book, from which text has been effaced so that the surface can be re-used. By virtue of their accumulated layers of traces, palimpsests are enormously evocative objects—evocative of human and material impermanence and the vast scale of human history. Clemente’s relationship with the histories of the inscribed page is widely known and celebrated; he has reinvigorated the idioms of both Indian and Italian manuscript painting, and has collaborated with poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and René Ricard. This volume takes the palimpsest as a metaphor for Clemente’s art, from early works on paper to large-format paintings and more recent, monumental watercolors.
