Gallerist and art world royalty Vito Schnabel's buzzy spaces in New York and St. Moritz are cultural hot-spots to see (great art) and be seen.

Photography By Ben Ritter

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In St. Moritz, the luxury alpine resorttown in Switzerland&rsquo;s Engadin Valley, it&rsquo;s normally the snow that gets all the attention during the winter. But don&rsquo;t be surprised this season if you hear a lot more people talking about clouds&mdash;or at least paintings of them, anyway. A never-before-seen exhibition of Francesco Clemente&rsquo;s work is currently on display at the Vito Schnabel Gallery, with the sleek top floor containing six new oversize paintings of clouds and the old, cavernous ground floor, a relic from the 19th century, exhibiting a series of frescos Clemente created in Rome, a technique the artist has been investigating since the 1980s.

Schnabel, a seasoned gallerist despite the fact that he&rsquo;s only 33 (he started in the business at just 16, showing a group exhibition in his hometown of New YorkCity), is particularly bright-eyed about the Clemente exhibition. &ldquo;It was kind of a big deal for us because I think he&rsquo;s such a great painter and someone I&rsquo;ve wanted to work with for a long time, and this is our first show together,&rdquo; Schnabel explains. It was, perhaps, a long time coming: Schnabel has known the 67-year-old artist for many years, having gone to school with his children at Saint Ann&rsquo;s in Brooklyn. Still, like any other gallerist, he had to convince the painter to display his work. The result was a show with Clemente at Schnabel&rsquo;s New York gallery, followed by an additional exhibitionin St. Moritz. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s two separate exhibitions just so it can give people a wide range of what he&rsquo;s been up to in the last two years,&rdquo; Schnabel says.

Clemente&rsquo;s exhibition in Switzerland will be give way to one by Markus L&uuml;pertz, which will include 15 years of work by the German painter, from the &rsquo;90s to current day. Due to the amount of labor and care it takes to put on these&nbsp;exhibitions, Schnabel is a familiar face in St. Moritz. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always in and out, so if I&rsquo;m in Europe, I go there for basically half of the duration of the show.&rdquo;

St. Moritz is a see-and-be-seen destination for the jet set and has hosted the Winter Olympics twice&mdash;it is also the site of the Cresta Run, a world-championship bobsled run made of natural ice, and a frozen lake that hosts polo and cricket. But these weren&rsquo;t the things that drew Schnabel to the location for his second gallery (he opened his first on Clarkson Street in 2013). In fact, it wasn&rsquo;t even the first place he thought of.&ldquo;I was looking for a space outside of New York, and I was looking in San Francisco; there were very few from New York that had opened there, and I felt it was a space where I knew people, and it was an interesting city and an interesting time, and it is still today. I felt there was a void I could fill,&rdquo; Schnabel says. &ldquo;But Bruno Bischofberger, who is a mentor and a friend and someone I try to spend as much time with as possible as he&rsquo;s a well of knowledge and information, said, &lsquo;I think I&rsquo;m going to close my gallery in St. Moritz. Would you want it? But I need to know soon.&rsquo; And I called him back in three hours and said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take it.&rsquo;&quot;&nbsp;

Schnabel had spent time in St. Moritz and Switzerland before. &ldquo;It seemed like a place that had a rich history of art and great galleries,&rdquo; he says, but, most importantly to him, opening his own space there &ldquo;made sense because a lot of the artists I wanted to show who maybe I couldn&rsquo;t show in New York at that time could work with me there. I wanted to have a platform in Europe to show art.&rdquo;

With seven years under his belt in New York and now five years in St. Moritz, Schnabel is eyeing a new project, although for now he&rsquo;s labeling it &ldquo;temporary&rdquo;: the conversion of the oldest post office in Santa Monica to a 15,000-square-foot gallery space, which he&rsquo;ll oversee for the next 10 months. This year, Schnabel will curate shows with artists such as Clemente, Pat Steir and Ariana Papademetropoulos and take private appointments.Schnabel shrugs humbly and smiles.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see if it lasts longer.&rdquo;

Markus Lüpertz Vier Generationen, 1990 Oil on cardboard 48 x 38 1/4 inches (122 x 97 cm) 50 3/8 x 40 3/4 x 2 inches (128 x 103.5 x 5 cm) framed :copyright: VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2020  Photo by Stefan Altenburger

Pat Steir Baby, 2017-2018 Oil on canvas 60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)  © Pat Steir Photo by Tom Powel Imaging Courtesy Levy Gorvy

Urs Fischer Bruno & Yoyo, 2015 Paraffin wax, microcrystalline wax, encaustic pigment, oil paint, steel, wicks 58 1/4h x 62 7/8w x 54 1/8d inches (147.9 x 159.8 x 137.2 cm) © Urs Fischer  Photo by Stefan Altenburger  Courtesy of the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery 

Gus Van Sant Untitled (Hollywood 7), 2019 Watercolor on linen 84 x 66 inches (213.4 x 167.6 cm) © Gus Van Sant  Photo by Argenis Apolinario  Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery

La Vie de Vito Schnabel

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