Curated by Julian Schnabel

From moth-burned Goya to volcanic clay fired in his daughter's Sicilian studio, the ten artworks selected by Julian Schnabel for his first curated launch exhibit the incisive eclecticism which guides his own practice – and has established him as one of the world's most influential and unpredictable painters.

I selected the artists in this group because I felt each one was contributing something we haven’t seen before, and it would be an opportunity for collectors to have something vital and inventive – something that I would want to hang on my wall and look at. I have work by all of these artists, and wanted to share my enthusiasm.

Julian Schnabel

Thomas Chapman, Felicidad Moreno, Milko Pavlov, Lola Montes Schnabel and Daniel Spivakov all retain an element of mystery within their artistic intentions. Recent originals – 10 in total – encompass new manifestations of the vitality Schnabel has observed in each of their work.

Thomas Chapman

Thomas Chapman (he/him) was born in 1975 in San Diego, USA and is now based in Berlin. Often working on repurposed fabric, he reconfigures his own biography into scenes that muddle spontaneity with conscious placement of objects, figures and moments. In doing so he asks what they might mean to him, and to others. Blue-grey hues and barely discernible forms lend an eerie mood to a pair of seaside vignettes.

These particular works sing back to the pastoral and the leisure that one might have spied on a lake during the pandemic. A car crash of significant patterns are dismantled and reassembled in the attempt to reconstruct a new place.

Julian Schnabel

Felicidad Moreno

Felicidad Moreno (she/her) was born in Lagartera, Spain in 1959. Often large, her paintings layer materials with disparate textures and properties to create energetic and abstract compositions. Two original works splash synthetic lacquer across the surface of spray-painted paper. Spontaneous placement makes way for linear drips in multiple directions – suggestive of an artwork created in phases, and in motion.

Felicidad Moreno has inverted the landscape of liquid into form. I’ve watched these paintings evolve for years, an accumulation of method and longing for some revelation that can only be accomplished through process and experimentation. The works I have selected are paintings on paper. Even though their size is smaller than her expansive paintings, the gesture is the same. The physicality and the scale is intact.

Lola Montes Schnabel

Lola Montes Schnabel (she/her) was born in New York City, USA in 1981 and now lives in Sicily. Working between kiln, laboratory and studio with local artisans and ancient techniques, her esoteric storytelling takes shape in paint and on film. Artist's apprentice and María – a pink-hued portrait and a teeming tableau in lilac – are painted on ceramic tiles made using clay from Mount Etna.

Start with wood, carve the panels, surface into drawing, then into painting and back. Etched and scratched sexual fairy tales – hallucinogenic, succinct. Imaginary characters hovering off a cliff in the Caribbean, just above the bay? Anything could come her way. These particular works by Lola, my daughter, are made on the ceramic tiles that she’s been working on in Sicily. They’re portraits as well as indecipherable narratives, which you can only find in her paintings.

Milko Pavlov

Milko Pavolv (he/him) was born in Aytos, Bulgaria in 1956 and now works between Sofia and Berlin. Frottage techniques, created by taking rubbings from pre-existing surfaces, add texture to his naturalistic abstract paintings. The presence of landscape or organic forms is suggested, but not confirmed. A pair of watercolours on paper showcase the relationship to colour and composition that underpins Milko’s carefully-layered artworks.

Works by Milko Pavlov lean towards being formed and then, somehow, locate a place that’s just beyond what you could’ve imagined. It’s almost impossible to invent a new abstraction after all that’s been done. When I saw Milko’s paintings I was relieved and filled with joy that it is still possible.

Daniel Spivakov

Daniel Spivakov, born in the Ukraine, is a young painter who is trying to figure out how to paint everything that he can see – and beyond it. The results are a time warp of history and the horrifying beauty of the present.

Daniel Spivakov (he/him) was born in 1996 in Kyiv, Ukraine, moved to Oklahoma, USA at the age of 15 and now lives in Berlin, Germany and Venice, Italy. Visual arts provided an escape from the language barriers he encountered during adolescence. Littered with references to art history, his artworks consider life and death, love and violence. Two works selected by Schnabel veil reproductions of works by Francisco Goya, taken from a book, which have been printed with the impression of a moth and manipulated with burns.

Opportunities to collect

If you’re interested in adding any of these artworks to your collection, or want to know more and them, enter the viewing room.

If you have any questions, one of our advisors will be happy to help. Send us an email on collecting@avantarte.com.

The Swedish House

While you're here, revisit our first collaboration with Julian Schnabel – a series of 10 works which interrupt a postcard cliché with swathes of white paint. Finished with hand-poured resin, no two are the same.