Italy Through Its Trees

Julian Schnabel has maintained a decades-long relationship with Italy, beginning with a pilgrimage in his twenties to see works by Giotto, Caravaggio, and Piero della Francesca. He pioneered painting on maps in 1979, challenging the medium's utilitarian function to discover aesthetic possibilities. Schnabel's plate paintings, initiated in 1978, employ a distinctive process: he applies shattered crockery to canvas to create textured surfaces, then applies Naples yellow as a ground before working with crimson and mineral violet. His practice is deeply physical—he paints on the floor, standing directly on broken dishes with a brush taped to a stick, mixing paint on the surface while working. This immersive approach captures spontaneity and allows chance forms to guide his mark-making, creating layered compositions that oscillate between the pictorial and physical.