Artist, screenwriter, and director Julian Schnabel was born on October 26, 1951, in New York, New York. One of the leading figures of the art world in the 1980s, Schnabel has proven to be talented in many creative fields. After graduating from University of Houston in the early 1970s, he eventually made this way to New York City.Schnabel got his first solo show at the famed Mary Boone Gallery in 1979, which helped launch his career as an artist. Since then, he has had numerous solo exhibitions around the world. Sometimes called a bad boy of the art world, Schnabel caused a stir by adding unusual elements, such as broken pottery, to his mammoth canvases.Exploring other creative outlets, Schnabel turned to filmmaking in the 1990s. He co-wrote and directed the 1996 feature film Basquiat about another famous artist from the 1980s. With his next film, Schnabel told the story of another creative visionary, the Cuban poet, and novelist, Reinaldo Arenas, in Before Night Falls (2000) starring Javier Bardem in the lead role. Both Schnabel and Bardem earned much critical acclaim for the film.In his next cinematic effort, Schnabel directed a film about the challenging true-life story of a French magazine editor who is completely paralyzed except for one eyelid in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). Using only blinking as a means of communication, the editor dictates his memoir. Schnabel has received several awards for his work on the film, including the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe Award.The following year, Schnabel saw the release of his latest directorial project, the concert film Lou Reed's Berlin (2008). He later worked on Miral, based on the true story of a Palestinian nurse who started an orphanage in Jerusalem in the late 1940s.Schnabels mythic, often controversial career is rooted in his ability to morph and change using a vast alchemy of sources and materials composed and distributed across surface and support in defiance of the very notions of moderation, rationality, and order. His baroque attitude is embodied in audaciously scaled paintings that, over the course of time, have combined oil painting and collage techniques; classical pictorial elements inspired by historical art and neo-expressionist features; abstraction and figuration. Tackling appropriately expansive themes such as sexuality, obsession, suffering, redemption, death, and belief, he has employed a diversity of found materials including broken plates, diverse textiles such as Kabuki theater backdrops, tarpaulins, and velvet; a plethora of images, names, and fragments of language; as well as thickly applied paint, viscous resin, and digital reproduction.Schnabel lives and works in New York City and Montauk, Long Island.50"H x 38"W, Ink and pencil on paper.

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