Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-1
Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-2
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Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-4
Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-1Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-2Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-3Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona) - image-4

Lot 60 D

Julian Schnabel - Untitled (La Banana è buona)

Auction 1223 - overview Cologne
06.06.2023, 18:00 - Evening Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 100.000 € - 150.000 €

Julian Schnabel

Untitled (La Banana è buona)
1988

Oil, fabric, paper and etching, collaged, on canvas. 188 x 138 cm (frame size 222 x 173 cm). In artist's frame. - With studio traces and minor traces of age.

The work to be auctioned here belongs to a series of works created at the end of the 1980s entitled 'La Banana è buona'. In this series, Julian Schnabel uses a central motif - usually a depiction of a copperplate engraving taken from European publications - which he paints over or supplements with strong colour streaks and lettering. Common to all the works is a centrally placed image, the fabric border along the four edges of the picture, the powerful application of paint with the aforementioned lettering and the artist's frame. In doing so, he creates a seemingly theatrical stage for his statement 'La banana è buona'. At the centre of the work offered here is a portrait of Pope Pius IX, considered a great reformer of the Catholic Church. The ironic undertone evoked by the banality of the statement is characteristic of Schnabel, who draws on historical influences but also uses pluralistic sources of inspiration.

Provenance

Waddington Galleries, London; Sotheby's, New York, 15.05.2008, lot 569; Private collection, Italy

Exhibitions

Monterrey/Mexico 1994/1995 (Museo de Monterrey), Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City), Julian Schnabel, Retrospectiva, exhib.cat., p.78/79 with illus.

London 1988 (Waddington Galleries), Julian Schnabel, exhib.cat.no.13, p. 29 with colour illus. and illus. on title