The sound of someone's backbone snapping

Julian Schnabel

A key member of the Neo-Expressionist movement that emerged in 1980s New York, Julian Schnabel makes monumental paintings that embrace material experimentation and feature thick drips, splatters, and expressive faces. Throughout his practice, which veers between figuration and abstraction, the artist has integrated textiles, broken plates, and snippets of text into his canvases. While primarily known as a painter, Schnabel has also worked in sculpture and film. Common themes include sexuality, obsession, suffering, redemption, and death; privileging a grand, poetic scale, the work—and its creator—can seem larger than life. Schnabel received his BFA from the University of Houston before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program for young artists. He has since exhibited in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Berlin, Tokyo, Milan, and Hong Kong. His work has sold for seven figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museo Reina Sofía, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.