Julian Schnabel (American, born 1951), a major figure of the “Neo-Expressionist” movement of the 1980s, is known for reworking older art practices of “Collage and Assemblage” and “Abstract-Expressionism” and fusing these with allusion and pastiche (what artists of these older practices originally sought to do away with). He received international success with his “Plate Paintings” which combined low-culture materials (broken plates) with “high art” formulas of portraiture and abstraction. Similar in spirit to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, grand in scale and charged with Schnabel’s unique bold-gestured brushwork, he has used tarps, sailcloth, awnings, various backdrops as well as canvas as the foundation for his often text-filled abstractions. His work, not only signals a type of cultural amnesia or historical confusion present in the eighties, but also a heroic neoconservative return to values of inclusion, especially in reuniting the public, popularly thought to be abandoned, with art. He claims to be, “aiming at an emotional state, a state that people can literally walk into and be engulfed.” Always a painter, Schnabel has extended his visual oeuvre to film, creating “Basquiat”, “Before Night Falls”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Miral”. His work is included in major international museums and private collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Guggenheim Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. He is currently represented by Gagosian Gallery. Schnabel lives and works in New York City and Montauk, Long Island. His contemporaries are David Salle, A.R. Penck, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Sigmar Polke and Eric Fischl.