Francesco Clemente: Portraits, Mary Boone Gallery / Walther König, New York / Cologne, 2007

Exhibition catalogue, Mary Boone Gallery, New York / Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2007. Illustrated softcover; 46 pages; 29.5 × 26 cm. In original publisher's shrinkwrap.

Condition: retained in its original shrinkwrap. The plastic has light rubbing, creasing and small splits around the edges and corners; the publication itself appears exceptionally well preserved beneath. From a collection of artist publications retained in their original wrapping. No other copy of this exact edition was located at the time of cataloguing.

The cover arranges twenty painted eyes within a rigid grid. Individual portraits are reduced to repeated fragments, turning the book into a field of looking before it has been opened.

Francesco Clemente emerged internationally during the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the Italian Transavanguardia. Working between Italy, India and New York, he developed a figurative language in which faces and bodies remain mutable—moving between portrait, self-portrait, mask and psychological projection.

This copy has remained unusually close to the condition in which it first entered circulation. Still held inside its publisher’s shrinkwrap, it has been preserved as stock rather than converted into a read or reference copy. The wrapping is no longer simply packaging; it records a publication withheld from ordinary handling.

Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.