Julian Schnabel, "Fox Farm Painting IX," 1989 © Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Fox Farm Painting IX, 1989, oil and gesso on velvet, 10' x 15' (304.8 cm x 457.2 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Julian Schnabel

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b. 1951, Brooklyn, New York

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Julian Schnabel is known for his multidisciplinary body of work that extends beyond painting to include sculpture, film, architecture, and design.

His use of preexisting materials not traditionally used in artmaking, varied painting surfaces, and unconventional modes of construction were pivotal in the reemergence of painting in the United States, positioning him as a vanguard among artists of his generation. Appropriating media and referents from the past and present, Schnabel has maintained an innovative practice, never restricting himself to an established style.

Schnabel’s engagement with art developed as a form of escapism during his childhood, a formative relationship between creative act and freedom that would later materialize in his culling from the expanse of visual culture. His family relocated from Brooklyn to Brownsville, Texas, in 1965 when he was fourteen. By the end of the decade, Schnabel had traveled to San Francisco and subsequently found himself back in Texas to study at the University of Houston, where he received his BFA (1969–73). During this time, Schnabel participated in his first group exhibition, Hidden Houston, at the University of Saint Thomas, Houston (1971), and applied for entry in the independent study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, to which he was accepted (1973–74). His completion of the program culminated in a group exhibition at the institution and just two short years later he received his first solo exhibition, held at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1976).

Julian Schnabel, The Patients and the Doctors, 1978

Julian Schnabel, The Patients and the Doctors, 1978, oil, plates and Bondo on wood, 8' × 9' (2.44 m × 2.74 m) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Julian Schnabel, Bones and Trumpets Rubbing Up Against Each Other Towards Infinity

Julian Schnabel, Bones and Trumpets Rubbing Against Each Other Towards Infinity, 1981, oil, wax, Mexican pots and plaster on wood, 9' × 13' (2.74 m × 3.96 m). Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Citing an early interest in the writing of Antonin Artaud and the work of Joseph Beuys, Cy Twombly, and Brice Marden, Schnabel considered the psychological weight of his materials as an accumulation of information through which he could express emotion. Throughout the mid- to late-1970s, his paintings were largely characterized by a vocabulary of reduced forms—symbols of crosses, shields, Cyprus trees, branches, cracks, and torsos—roughly rendered on densely textured, earth-hued grounds. Further engaging with the idea of surface, these paintings were often comprised of wax, modeling paste, and impasto, negotiated with punctures or architectural elements that created a tension between background and foreground. Schnabel’s breakthrough came in the form of his first Plate Painting, The Patients and the Doctors (1978), created upon his return from traveling through Europe. Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s mosaics in Barcelona, Schnabel imagined covering the wood panels of his hotel room armoire with broken plates.

Substituting for the aggression of his earlier brushstrokes, the fragments of shattered dishware on painted wood panel advance from the background, forming a jagged and fractured topography overlaid with painted imagery.

Untitled by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Untitled, 2017, gesso on found fabric, 288" × 288" (731.5 cm × 731.5 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Install of Symbols of Actual Life by Julian Schnabel

Installation view, Julian Schnabel: Symbols of Actual Life, Apr 21 – Aug 5, 2018, Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

After an introduction through Ross Bleckner, Schnabel became affiliated with Mary Boone Gallery, New York, in 1978 and received a one-person exhibition the following year. He also began exhibiting his work in Europe with Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich. By the end of 1982, Schnabel had received major solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (1981), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982), and The Tate Gallery, London (1982). His work was also included in the Whitney Biennial (1981) as well as the Venice Biennale (1980, 1982). He began exhibiting with Pace Gallery in 1984, an affiliation that would last for twenty years. Eschewing convention, Schnabel’s work throughout the 1980s pivoted stylistically from Plate Paintings and portraits, to pictorial narratives and text-based works, all while exploring new methods of applying paint—with brooms, for example—and new support materials, spanning velvet ground, polyester, linoleum, rugs, and heroically scaled tarpaulin. He also incorporated the production of large-scale sculpture into his practice.

Portrait of Andy Warhol by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Portrait of Andy Warhol, 1982, oil on velvet, 107 3/4" × 120 1/8" (274 cm × 305 cm). Collection: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Ethnic Type #14 by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Ethnic Type #14, 1984, oil, animal hide and modeling paste on brown velvet, 9' × 10' (274 cm × 305 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Drawing inspiration from French New Wave, Italian Neo-Realism, and classic Hollywood cinema throughout his artistic career, in the 1990s Schnabel made the natural progression toward cinema. He made his directorial debut in 1996 with the feature-length film Basquiat, based on the life of Jean-Michel Basquiat, soon followed by another biopic, Before Night Falls (2000), about the life of Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas. In 2007, Schnabel released Berlin, a documentary film about Lou Reed, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby, for which Schnabel won the award for best director at the Cannes Film Festival (2007) and was nominated for an Academy Award (2008). He most recently directed Miral (2010), for which he won four awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (2010). In Schnabel’s paintings, as in his films, fragments of images, memory, and emotion collapse into new frontiers, expansive grounds for excavation.

Second of the Two Fridas by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Second of the Two Fridas, 2024-2025, oil, plates and bondo on aluminum, 60" × 48" (152.4 cm × 121.9 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 2 by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Trees of Home (for Peter Beard) 2, 2020, oil, plates and bondo on wood, 72" × 60" (182.9 cm × 152.4 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Schnabel has been the subject of eleven traveling solo exhibitions among numerous other one-artist presentations. He has had four retrospective exhibitions, including Paintings 1975–1986, which opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1986 and traveled to Musée National d'Art Moderne, Musée national d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, before closing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1988. Recent one-person exhibitions have been held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2010); The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2013); Museo de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (2014); the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2015), the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2016), The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut (2017), the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2018), and Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2018). In 2018, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, invited Schnabel to curate a selection of works from their collection that have never before been exhibited together. His work has been featured in hundreds of group presentations, including the Venice Biennale (1980, 1982, 1997, 2003); the Whitney Biennial (1981, 1983, 1987, 1991), and Carnegie International (1985, 1989), among others. He was invited as the guest of honor at the São Paulo Biennale, Brazil, in 1994, and was elected Honorary Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2009.

Rebirth III (The Red Box) by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Rebirth III (The Red Box), Painted After the Death of Joseph Beuys, 1986, oil, tempera on Kabuki theatre backdrop, 148" × 134" (375.9 cm × 340.4 cm.). Collection Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Wind by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, The Wind, 1985, oil, spray enamel, modeling paste on canvas, 166" × 217" (421.6 cm × 551.2 cm). Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view of Paintings 1975–1987 by Julian Schnabel

Installation view, Julian Schnabel: Paintings 1975–1987, Nov 5, 1987 – Jan 10, 1988, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Schnabel’s work is held in over fifty international public collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongbuk, South Korea.

Julian Schnabel has been represented by Pace since 2016, following representation by the gallery from the mid-1980s into the 2000s.

Buñuel Awake (for Jean-Claude Carrière) or Bouquet of Mistakes by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Buñuel Awake (for Jean-Claude Carrière) or Bouquet of Mistakes, 2022, oil, spray paint, molding paste, gesso on velvet, 168" × 330" × 1-1/2" (426.7 cm × 838.2 cm × 3.8 cm). Collection Los Angeles County Museum of Art © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view of Bouquet of Mistakes by Julian Schnabel

Installation view, Julian Schnabel: Bouquet of Mistakes, Sep 15 – Oct 28, 2023, Pace Gallery, New York © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Self-Portrait as a Blind Swordsman Searching for Louise by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Self-Portrait as a Blind Swordsman Searching for Louise, 2017, oil and latex paint on bronze with patina, stainless steel inner structure, 183-1/2" × 106-1/2" × 78" (466.1 cm × 270.5 cm × 198.1 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ESMÉ by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, ESMÉ, 2020, cast silicon bronze with stainless steel structure, 191" × 168" × 55" (485.1 cm × 426.7 cm × 139.7 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Big Girl Painting by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Big Girl Painting, 2013, oil on canvas, 144" × 132" (365.8 cm × 335.3 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

May by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, May, 2017, inkjet print and oil on polyester, 88" × 68" (223.5 cm × 172.7 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Preschool and Afterschool by Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel, Preschool and Afterschool, 2018, oil and gesso on found fabric, 128" × 213-1/2" (325.1 cm × 542.3 cm) © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view of Schnabel and Spain: Anything Can Be a Model for a Painting

Installation view, Schnabel and Spain: Anything Can Be a Model for a Painting, Apr 8 – Jun 12, 2022, CAC MÁLAGA, Malaga © 2026 Julian Schnabel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York