At Triennale Milano «In Between»: between Francesco and Clemente

(article originally published in Italian)

We could start at the end, that is, one of the latest and most recent paintings on display, "Winter Flowers in Spring II", to enter the beautiful and accurate retrospective that Triennale Milano has dedicated to Francesco Clemente until September 6, curated by Francesca Pietropaolo with Robert Storr. Not because the work closes a path, but because it condenses many threads. In these flowers, splendid but at the same time repusive, a botanical garden of the spirit seems to surface where beauty is never innocent and sensuality always carries with it a possibility of dissolution. They are, after all, these fleurs du mal clementian, seductive and ambiguous images, which attract the gaze and force him to enter another, saturated, almost suffocating space, a jungle of sensual colors in which the enveloping sign dominates the surface until it appropriates the surrounding space.