The upcoming retrospective exhibition at the House of Arts Veszprém presents Julian Schnabel's graphic prints (Printed Works) made after 1983. The public will now have the opportunity to take an in-depth look at the kind of works Schnabel's art produced, which form a significant but rarely examined part of his oeuvre. This will be the very first exhibition of his prints in Hungary, including brand new works created last year.
The exhibition reflects the unique vision of Schnabel, an artist who is always surprising us with his new graphic processes. Prints on velvet, prints on world maps and even collages on lithography and etching can be seen.
Born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York Schnabel's first major solo exhibition was held in 1976 at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. This was followed by another solo show in 1979 at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York City, where Schnabel exhibited his first 'plate paintings'. The reception of the works made from broken crockery was mixed: on the one hand they were an overwhelming success, but on the other they also provoked strong opposition. In 1981 Schnabel was the youngest artist along with Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke and Markus Lüpertz to be included in the New Spirit in Painting exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, curated by Nicholas Serota, Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal.
Schnabel's work has been exhibited in numerous venues around the world, including Kunsthalle Basel; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Palazzo Venezia, Rome; Schloss Derneburg, Germany; Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Museo Correr, Italy; J. F. Willumsen Museum, Denmark; The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich; Dallas Contemporary; Dairy Art Centre, London; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale; University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. He has also exhibited at some of the world's most important galleries, including Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris; The Pace Gallery, New York; Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, St. Moritz and Zurich; Gagosian Gallery, New York and Los Angeles; Almine Rech Gallery, Paris; CFA Berlin; Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Max Hetzler Gallery Berlin. Schnabel's works are also in the public collections of the Kunstmuseum Basel; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York and Bilbao; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, etc.
Schnabel's creative drive to "create something" was expressed not only in the visual arts but also in filmmaking. In 1996 he wrote and directed a feature film about his fellow New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, entitled Basquiat, which was one of the official shortlisted films at the 1996 Venice Film Festival. His second film, Before Night Falls, based on the life of the late Cuban novelist in exile Reinaldo Arenas won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor (Javier Bardem) at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. For this he won the Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Best Foreign Language Film category and was nominated for four Oscars. The same year Schnabel made a film about Lou Reed's Berlin concert at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. His fifth film, Miral, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a controversial winner of the UNESCO and UNICEF awards at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Miral was also screened in the UN General Assembly Hall. His latest film, "Van Gogh – At Eternity's Gate" made in 2018 is a harrowing portrait of the Dutch painter’s story of his time in Arles narrated in the singular first person. Willem Defoe was awarded the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role as Vincent van Gogh and was nominated for Best Actor at the 2019 Golden Globes and an Oscar.
The exhibition is open until 5 October 2019.
Photos by Gábor Gáspár
