Well, this exhibition occupies ‘the in-between space’, that of the threshold: it strikes me as perfect for these complex times.

A brief biography of Francesco Clemente, one of our great masters, just to refresh your memory: he was born in Naples in ’52; in 1970, he studied architecture at La Sapienza University in Rome before devoting himself to art. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when painting had been declared obsolete, Clemente’s work played a significant role, at least in Italy, in the revival of this art form. After moving to New York in the 1980s, Clemente, through his nomadic lifestyle, paved the way for an artistic existence capable of moving across different latitudes. This clearly explains the title of this solo exhibition at the Triennale: ‘in-between’, understood not merely as a biographical condition, but as painting conceived as a perpetual metamorphosis between the interior and the exterior, the sensual and the spiritual, the conceptual and the perceptual (the exhibition runs until 6 September: it’s well worth a visit).

Curated by Francesca Pietropaolo with Robert Storr, in partnership with the Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York and St. Moritz, this is the first retrospective dedicated to the master of the Transavantgarde in Italy for over fifteen years (the last one, believe it or not, was back in 2009 at the Madre in Naples!) It is also the first major exhibition in a public institution in Milan, a city that was crucial and fruitful for Francesco Clemente during his formative years. Why the Triennale and not, for example, the Museo del Novecento? This project forms part of an initiative to promote Italian art, organised by the Triennale and curated by Damiano Gulli, aimed at exploring leading figures capable of moving seamlessly across media, techniques and disciplines. Francesco Clemente is certainly one of them.

The exhibition, organised in close collaboration with the artist and featuring loans from prestigious public and private collections (such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Peter Marino Art Foundation), brings together some 70 works spanning over five decades of his career. What emerges is a multifaceted and deliberately non-linear portrait. Rather than proceeding through sequential developments, Clemente’s visual universe tends to radiate in a multitude of directions, and the Milan exhibition bears valuable witness to this: from drawing to watercolour, from pastel to fresco, right through to oil painting and artist’s books.

The exhibition, which follows a loosely chronological order, opens with a series of historical self-portraits that introduce the theme of the transformation of identity: from Self-Portrait with Gold (1979) and Self-Portrait with Bird (1980) to the recent and evanescent After a Poem (2024). From here, the exhibition charts the cultural landscapes of an artist who is cosmopolitan by definition, inclined to blend Western mysticism (Christian and Hermetic) with Eastern philosophies and Afro-Brazilian syncretic rituals. His seminal encounter with India, dating from 1973, is brought to life in masterpieces such as Two Painters (1980, a truly remarkable piece) and in contemporary series such as Devigarh (2017).

Equally crucial is New York in 1981, where Clemente set up the studio in which he still works today, establishing an extraordinary network of creative collaboration. A highlight of the exhibition is Saxophone (1984), an extraordinary six-handed collaboration created with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, alongside the exquisite artist’s books produced with the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, such as Images from Mind and Space (1983).

And whilst a significant section of the exhibition is devoted to the art of portraiture (with a series of works dedicated to Alba, his wife and muse), it does not shy away from engaging with the present: whilst 5-14-2020 (2020) bears the traces of the pandemic’s drama, the recent Winter Flowers in Spring II (2025) encapsulates the poetic essence of the entire exhibition, reaffirming Clemente’s conviction that, even in the world’s deepest winter, beauty can always find a way to emerge.