(born in New York City in 1951)
Untitled, 1982, signed, dated and inscribed “Anna, Lisa, Francesca” on the reverse, oil, oil crayons and mixed media on canvas, 305 x 274 cm

Provenance:
Carlo Monzino Foundation, Milan (acquired directly from the artist in 1982)
Haralabos Bambis Melenos Collection, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Zurich, Size Matters, Plutschow Gallery, in collaboration with Edelman Arts, New York, 12 April – 13 July 2019, exh. cat with ill.

„In a famous interview, Jackson Pollock maintained that "painting is a state of being... Painting is the discovery of oneself. Every good artist paints what he is." This is especially true of Schnabel; he is as one with his works.

The very choice that he makes to use sometimes enormous formats satisfies many demands, the most important of which (…) is that of cancelling out the spectator when he encounters the work. One is met with a challenge, an attack, a swallowing up.
Our daily world, which is made up of conventions, habit, rituals, is replaced by the one created by the artist. It is an art, therefore, which tends to position itself at the extreme limits of our perception and to fill our world with its own existence in a continuous attempt to destroy the bonds with pictorial tradition.

When we stand before Schnabel's work, we are whisked away to a distant epoch in which art had a more active role in rituals, magic and in life itself than today. The expressive violence (which is above all biological) characterises the (perhaps illusory) explosion of freedom of the vastest eclecticism and Alexandrine thinking which we have encountered to date”.

Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, in catalog of the artist's retrospective held at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna (22 November 1996 - 30 January 1997)