Early Life and Education
Born in Brooklyn, New York City to Esta Greenberg and Jack Schnabel. Schnabel moved with his family to Brownsville, Texas when still young. It was in Brownsville that he spent most of his formative years and where he took up surfing and resolved to be an artist. He is from a Jewish background and his mother was president in 1948 of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah, a religious Women's Zionist Organization in America.
He received his B.F.A. at the University of Houston. After graduating, he sent an application to the independent study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His application included slides of his work sandwiched between two pieces of bread. He was admitted into the program. Schnabel worked as a short-order cook and frequented Max's Kansas City, a restaurant-nightclub, while he worked on his art. In 1975, Schnabel had his first solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Over the next few years he traveled frequently to Europe, where he was enormously impressed by the work of Antoni Gaudi, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys.
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