Julian Schnabel, Portrait of Italy Through Its Trees I, 2025. Oil, plates and bondo on aluminum 84 x 132 inches (213.4 x 335.3 cm). Courtesy of Julian Schnabel Studio; Photography by Tom Powel Imaging; Courtesy of Julian Schnabel and Vito Schnabel Gallery
From 25th April to 15th August 2026, Château La Coste presents a major exhibition of Julian Schnabel in the Galerie des Anciens Chais, curated in dialogue with Donatien Grau. The presentation spans five decades of work, alongside new paintings conceived for the Provençal landscape.
Experimental painting techniques as a language of freedom
Schnabel’s practice is defined by an unruly approach to image-making, where wax, velvet, shattered plates, resin, and found materials enter the painting as equal agents. In works such as Jack the Bellboy (A Season in Hell) and The Edge of Victory, paint accumulates like sediment—each layer registering time, gesture, and residue.
The exhibition follows his trajectory from the early Plate Paintings to expansive works that hold abstraction and figuration in unstable balance. Shards of ceramic embedded in dense impasto fracture the surface into sculptural fields, while sailcloth works and fabric-based pieces allow wind and gravity to intervene directly in the composition.