Self-Portrait of an Androgyne

In this large-scale self-portrait, we see a portrayal of Francesco Clemente holding an image of a female body in front of his own, set against a rich blue backdrop. The recognisable face with almond shaped eyes, as seen in many self-portraits by Clemente, looks straight ahead, confronting both the viewer and the artist himself as he explores his physical and spiritual presence. The art historian Robert Storr has described the artist as taking on the role of a ‘changeling, an icon of perpetually transformational self-hood’ in his self-portraits, clearly shown here as he imagines himself as an Adrogynae' (R. Storr, ‘Metamorphic “Me”’ in Francesco Clemente, Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG Zurich, 2013, unpaged). The artist’s work, produced from the 1970s to the present day, has been described as a revolt against formalism and the disconnected quality of much conceptualist art – resulting in a highly personal and subjective exploration of dreams, mythology, gender and identity.

‘My work runs through iconography. It doesn’t promote one iconography over another. I carry inside me the idea that it’s better to be many than one, that many gods are better than just one god, many truths are better than one alone’
(F. Clemente, quoted in Francesco Clemente, exh. cat., Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1984, unpaged).