Francesco Clemente is a self-taught painter and published poet who was born in Naples, Italy in 1952; he also went to school for Architecture in 1970 in Italy (“Biography”1)(“Clemente”1). “In 1973 Clemente made his first trip to India, where he now spends part of each year studying the Buddhist religion and the Sanskrit language, the classical language of India.”(“Clemente”,1). He moved to America in 1980; he and his family mainly reside in Greenwich Village in New York City, his art studio is nearby (Sischy,1). When asked in an interview about his process of deciding who he will paint he speaks about a persons status set and that it is not the persons achieved status that helps him to decide, it is that he is “…fascinated by what’s behind the mask, which is something frail, yet at the same time reassuring, because it remains.”(Sischy,3). In the same interview Clemente is asked about his self-portraits “Where are you in your head when you paint them?” Clemente speaks of his own reflexivity in response to the question: “In my head I am in one of those Buddhist caves where you see a thousand Buddha faces on the wall. In my head I am on my seventeen-year-old acid trip, when I saw my personas fall one minute after another, as if I was dying every moment.”…”I'm at the age where I don't need an acid trip to feel naked. To feel that I don't exist. Now a self-portrait is almost a reminder to me that I do exist, at least for a foreign eye. What I make are collected feelings, so I think the only way for me to see my work and not feel that I'm crazy is to see it through someone else's eyes. Your feelings exist if someone else feels the same. Otherwise you might think you really are crazy.”(Sischy,4). Clemente’s numerous self-portraits, the first done in 1976 have been called “ironic” (“Francesco”1)...
