Talk - Francesco Clemente’s Tarot Cards
21.05.2026, 7:00 PM
Talk by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi
Italian art critic, curator and museum director
On the occasion of the exhibition TAROT. Origins, Cards, Fortunes, at the Accademia Carrara Museum in Bergamo, Italy, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi explores Francesco Clemente’s engagement with tarot and his ongoing investigation into symbols and their capacity to generate new meanings.
In the series of 78 works devoted to the cards, Clemente brings together esoteric references, traditional iconographies and autobiographical elements. Portraits of people close to him—from the worlds of art, literature and performance—transform the deck into a space of encounter between different lives, experiences and languages.
Created between Naples, New York, Madras and Taos, the works trace an intimate geography shaped by technical variety and experimentation.
This symbolic, relational and open-ended approach to meaning also continues in Art on Cards, the curatorial project conceived by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and developed with leading international contemporary artists, including Francesco Clemente.