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Artist: Julian Schnabel

In 1977, an unknown American painter named Julian Schnabel was living in Milan and painted some Italian paintings in the basement of a residencia at via Gentilino 9 near the piazza 14 di Maggio. At the time, nobody saw them except Ruggiero Jannuzelli who owned the residencia and who bought them, and put one with a black cross in the church at his home in Voghera...


Almost fifty years later, the exhibition Julian Schnabel and Italy pays homage to the enduring relationship between that unknown American artist and the country where he made paintings in a basement all those years ago; how Italy has influenced his creativity and how he, in turn, has reflected the rich history and culture of Italy in his art. Offering an insight into the importance of Italy for Schnabel over an astonishing forty-year career, the exhibition reveals the thread of Italy that weaves through many of his most significant artworks.

From the very first Venice Biennale in 1980, in the company of Anselm Kiefer, George Baselitz, and Francesco Clemente, to the exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York the following year; from the series of four works dedicated to Maria Callas, realised in 1982, to that called Italian Paintings in 1988; from the exhibition Summer. Julian Schnabel, realised in 2007 by Marco Voena and Gian Enzo Sperone at Palazzo Venezia in Rome and the Rotonda della Besana in Milan, to the 2009 exhibition, realised by Marco Voena and situated in the Raffaello Causa room at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, comprising nine large canvases from the Chinese Paintings series; from the Capri Paintings, started in 2008 and finished in 2015, to the exhibition Julian Schnabel: Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing at the Museo Correr in Venice, curated by Norman Rosenthal in 2011; from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque to Neorealism, from Michelangelo Antonioni to Caravaggio and Giotto.

Julian Schnabel's art and subsequently his existence are linked to Italy. Julian Schnabel and Italy aims to recount this bond, matured over time and the result of countless journeys, readings and conversations. The artist has encountered, researched and analysed some of the main distinguishing features of Italy, exploring its geography and examining its history. He has grasped and engaged with its more subtle characteristics, as well as some that are extremely well-known. Italy has been a subject for his art, and therefore a protagonist on which to reflect, and at the same time has provided a stage for analyses that venture far beyond it.

The corpus of works on display brings together some of the main series of paintings that have characterised Julian Schnabel's artistic production: Number 3 (Self-Portrait of Caravaggio as Goliath, Michelangelo Merisi), an extraordinary ‘plate painting’ that pays homage to the theatrical and impetuous force of Caravaggio; Untitled (Barilla. What are you made of?), created in 2009 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Parma-based company, celebrated through a subtle and amusing play on words; Ogni Angelo Ha Il Suo Lato Spavaventoso (Every Angel Has Its Scary Side), a view of the rocky and imposing coastline of Capri, created in 2008; and finally, a series of seven antique nautical maps of Portofino, made in 2022. In these works, Schnabel adds layers of paint to each map, creating representations of the maritime pines native to that particular stretch of Italian coastline through rich, expressive painterly strokes. Using a brush thickly laden with paint and attached to the end of a pole, Schnabel worked in a manner reminiscent of Matisse in his latter years. The Pini series thus reflects the expressive physicality of the great artist who worked just across the Ligurian sea from Portofino in Nice, over 70 years earlier.

It is precisely the Pini series dedicated to Portofino and exhibited at Castello Brown in 2022 that forms the heart of the exhibition. From time immemorial, above a rocky outcrop called Punta Carega in front of the bay of Portofino, there stood a maritime pine tree that had a commanding presence, silhouetted against the sea. A symbol of resistance and poignant beauty, it was destroyed during a terrible storm that devastated the Ligurian coastline in 2018. The absence of this symbol gave rise to the desire, shared by Julian Schnabel, that the artist create a sculpture on the square beyond which the Punta Carega rock rises, as a testimony to the imperishable force of nature: the exhibition aims to raise the necessary funds so that Julian Schnabel can realise this great public work.