Self-Portrait #3 (Pincers)
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View on museum website →Medium
softground etching in black on Arches Satine paper
Dimensions
sheet: 41.3 x 52.1 cm (16 1/4 x 20 1/2 in.) image: 23.5 x 33.7 cm (9 1/4 x 13 1/4 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Kathan Brown
Accession Number
1998.40.78
Art Historical Context
Francesco Clemente's *Self-Portrait #3Pincers)*, in 1981, viewers into the artist's introspective and surreal world. This black softground etching on luxurious Arches Satine paper 41.3 x 52.1 cm overall, with the image spanning 23.5 x 33.7 cm. As part of a series of self-portraits it exemplifies Clemente's Neo-Expressionist style, in the Italian Transavanguardia movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s—a rebellious return to figurative painting amid conceptual art's dominance. Softground etching, a refined printmaking technique, allows for velvety textures and subtle tonal variations by pre...
About the Artist
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente was born on March 23, 1952, in Naples, Italy, into an aristocratic family as the only son of Judge Marchese Lorenzo Clemente di San Luca and his wife, Bianca Quarto. Drawn to art from childhood through dreamlike drawings inspired by recollections, he moved to Rome in 1970 to study architecture at Sapienza University but soon abandoned it for visual arts. There, he met the concep...