Installation view of Francesco Clemente, Twenty Years of Painting: 2001 – 2021 at the Old Santa Monica Post Office, November 5, 2021 – January 16, 2022. Artworks © Francesco Clemente; Photo by Elon Schoenholz
It has been almost twenty years since internationally-renowned artist Francesco Clemente exhibited his work in Los Angeles. Thanks to a collaboration between Vito Schnabel, the wunderkind international gallerist and son of artist Julian Schnabel, and British real estate developer Alexander Dellal, thirty of Clemente’s paintings dating between 2001 and 2021 are now on display at the historic Old Santa Monica Post Office. The venue, built in 1938 as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal project, is a historic landmark retaining its distinctive art deco exterior in contrast to the sprawling 15,000 square foot interior space it contains, which is taken down to its raw industrial bones of metal beams, exposed concrete walls and original end-grain wood flooring. Although tenuously temporary, Schnabel’s one-year lease of this massive space has enabled him to exhibit Clemente’s large scale works in a venue perfectly suited to the artist’s storied work.