Porta Coeli

'The artist's job is to bring back the consciousness that nothing is really necessary, and that rational things, rational decisions and facts and events, are not any more necessary than imaginary things...it could be a step forward to realise that the rational picture of the world is also an imagination; it has the same reality as a myth. It is a product of the mind; it is not more substantial than the mind' (R. Crone, Francesco Clemente, New York 1987, pp. 61-62).

In Porta Coeli (The Gate of Heaven) a lone figure lying prone and staring straight out of the painting is enclosed by a seemingly infinite abstract field of yellow gold. Drenched in this golden light which is penetrated at the top of the painting by a small blue rectangular portal supposedly opening onto another dimension or arena of understanding, a mystical and romantic sense of self and of transcendence is generated by this simple, enigmatic and evocative painting.

Painted in 1983, Porta Coeli belongs to a series of works from the period in which Clemente explored the boundaries of the notion of self. The enigmatic and perhaps indefinable borderline that exists between the exterior and interior world of an individual has long been a source of fascination for Clemente. His perception of the body as a vessel that defines the borderline between an individual and the cosmos permeates much of his art. In this work with its mysterious and idealistic title, a mystic and meditative union seems to be taking place between the one and the One, between the self and the infinite. It is a work that seems to exult in the possibility of spiritual transcendence.