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Francesco Clemente

When you love something, there’s nothing better than sharing it with others. That’s how illy Art Collections are born: from the desire to share with the whole world our passion for art. They are exceptional coffee cups, offering the creativity of a  ainter, the touch of a sculptor or the look of a movie director to enjoy with a unique tasting coffee.

Neapolitan by birth, world traveler by vocation, Francesco Clemente has built his unique and unrivaled style, made of explorations, traditions and long waits, interrupted by sudden explosions of energy.
The same unique and incomparable illy style, which blends the best arabica qualities in a full and balanced taste.

“A spontaneous moment that disrupts a rule” this is the essence of Clemente’s art. Each one of his works always surprises us with a small unpredictable detail which makes his work, a work of art. The same pleasant surprise you feel each time you taste an illy coffee.

“I like ceremonies, the vocabulary of rites and objects full of meaning.” It’s easy to understand why Clemente has decided to dedicate himself, with great passion, to the decoration of the illy Art Collection cups. Because no rite can be more pleasant than a great tasting illy coffee, every day.

“… The Neapolitan artist’s nomadism can be encountered in the stylistic fusion he achieves between representation and abstraction, between the full and the empty, between decoration and narration, between the East and the West. His colours take on a tonality between the mind and the natural. This also happens when Clemente encounters ceramics to decorate the Illy collection cups and saucers, where he confirms his intention of creating a serial iconography through the presence of printed letters that are part of the same alphabet (his language) but also underline the difference in each product.
All this implies fluidity and flow, integration in nature and immersion in subjectivity. The ceramics become the welcoming support of his vision which moves happily from pictorial fixity to the visual condition of a liquid image.”

Achille Bonito Oliva