Julian Schnabel. Pinturas (1978-2003)

Towards the late seventies, Schnabel begins to use pieces of plates attached to supports which placed him in the middle of a heated debate about the purpose and future of painting. Painting that way again, after the minimalist and conceptual trends of previous decades, was taken as a provocation. It seems that this idea of making a mosaic arose from a visit to Barcelona and, specifically, Antoni Gaudí’s architecture. The artist has sometimes expressed his interest in eliminating the the bi-dimensionality of the canvas, as well as his intention to break the surface of the pieces.

This exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is a retrospective of Schnabel’s series created between 1978 and 2003. In his canvasses that are more than four metres high he mixes techniques, objects, words and materials, with results that are between figuration and abstraction. In his paintings Schnabel includes religious and private mythical images and signs, associated with his individual history and the history of art and culture. His works retain a remarkable oscillation between abstraction and figuration, between passages of frantic and serene painting, with which he represents a new subjectivity where the conceptual thrust integrates with the pleasure of manual tasks, using all instruments of expression and all languages available.