“The trans-avant-garde rejects the idea of an artistic process aimed entirely at conceptual abstraction. It introduces the possibility of not considering the linear course of earlier art as final…” (Achille Bonito Oliva)
Italy’s Transavanguardia was a fundamentally important art movement that responded to an emerging excitement, a “hysteria for the new”, that sought to return to traditional elements of the painterly practice. During a time in which avant-garde movements such as the Arte Povera were dominating the Italian art scene, promoting conceptual art-making, the artists of the Transavanguardia actively revisited Expressionist painting. Amongst its most prominent members were artist Nicola de Maria, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Mimmo Paladino and Enzo Cucchi. They remain highly acclaimed for their progressive contributions to Italian painting.
Founded by art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, the art movement originated from a group exhibition inaugurated in 1979 in the town of Genazzano. “Le Stanze”, “The Rooms”, was a show bringing together a group of emerging young painters that were united in their expressive painterly practice. When curating the exhibition, Oliva coined the term Transavanguardia, or trans- avant-garde, which introduced these artists as harbingers of what would be destined to become an internationally recognised phenomenon, becoming one of the most important post-war art movements since the Arte Povera.
The face of the Transavanguardia, artist Francesco Clemente (b.1952) is renowned for his visionary practice and international presence and acclaim. His works perfectly trace the movement’s mythical expressive and figurative elements. Compositions saturated by rich symbolic reference to Hindu, or Buddhist ritualistic objects, abstract depictions of the sky inspired by Sung Po-Jen, Chinese poet and painter are just some of the few subjects characteristic of Clemente’s wide-ranging leitmotifs.