Italy Through Its Trees

Schnabel's paintings on Italian maps and broken-plate works depicting umbrella pines, exploring abstraction through two decades-long bodies of work.

Why go

Schnabel unites two signature idioms—paintings on maps (since 1979) and plate paintings (since 1978)—for the first time, with the map works serving as direct drawings for the plate paintings. The umbrella pines of Ansedonia become a vehicle for investigating how abstraction emerges within visible form, with Schnabel literally standing on shattered

What to expect

Large-scale oil paintings on aluminum with broken plates and bondo, alongside inkjet and oil works on paper. The plate paintings (up to 108" × 132") feature layered marks in Naples yellow, cerulean blue, crimson, and mineral violet; the map works overlay tree imagery onto eighteenth-century Italian cartography at monumental scale.

Things to know

• Schnabel began this body of work in summer 2025 while living near Villa Borghese in Rome during filming of his feature film *In the Hand of
• The umbrella pine (*Pinus pinea*) is native to Italy and iconic in Italian painting; the same trees may have witnessed Caravaggio and Piero
• First time Schnabel has made drawings (the map works) directly for paintings (the plate works).
• Schnabel painted the plate works on the floor, standing on broken dishes with a brush taped to a stick, mixing paint directly on the canvas
• Trees have recurred throughout Schnabel's oeuvre since 1978, from branch-like cracks in *The Patient and the Doctors* to latticework in *The
• The exhibition runs May 15–August 14, 2026, at Pace's 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York.