'I thought that if painting is dead, then it’s a nice time to start painting. People have been talking about the death of painting for so many years that most of those people are dead now.' —Julian Schnabel
Executed in 1982, Julian Schnabel’s Untitled is a monumental work on canvas created at the height of his career in the 1980s. Coming into prominence in the 70s, Schnabel had his breakthrough solo exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery in February and October of 1979. Schnabel’s works were celebrated as ‘the return to painting’, marking his arrival in the art scene as a bold and animated visionary. Since then, he has experimented with a variety of styles and materials, including film. While painting has been the main driver of his oeuvre, he has successfully received awards as Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and at the Golden Globes.
Untitled, 1982, embodies Julian Schnabel’s figurative and abstracted style: two women appear in the background amongst a non-descript scene with trees, all unnecessary details are omitted in the wonderfully gestural brushstrokes and heavy paint drips. He comments, ‘I think more in terms of logic and beyond logic-something that you work on until it becomes something you’ve never seen before. That configuration, between what’s physical and what’s pictorial, that space in there is the sublime. (…) It dismantles itself as you recognize it.’iUntitled was in the prestigious collection of the Carlo Monzino Foundation in Milan. Monzino was a champion for artists such as Andy Warhol and generously loaned significant works to museums worldwide.
Julian Schnabel discusses his paintings and his style in Julian Schnabel Presents: Out of Sync, Palazzo Chupi, New York, 2017
i Julian Schnabel quote in conversation with Alex Gartenfeld in Julian Schnabel: Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing, exh. cat., Museo Correr, Venice, 2011, p. 42
Provenance
Carlo Monzino Foundation, Milan (acquired directly from the artist in 1982) Haralabos Bambis Melenos Collection Milan Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Zurich, Plutschow Gallery, in collaboration with New York, Edelman Arts, Size Matters, 11 April – 15 July 2019
signed, titled, inscribed and dated 'ANNA LISA FRANCESCA UNTITLED Julian Schnabel 1982' on the overlap oil and oil stick on stitched canvas 300 x 275 cm (118 1/8 x 108 1/4 in.) Executed in 1982.