Two-person exhibition
Nebelstreif
Spencer Lewis and Markus LüpertzVito Schnabel Gallery, St. MoritzJuly 17 – September 5, 2026
Nebelstreif — ‘streak of fog’ — is drawn from Goethe’s 1782 poem Der Erlkönig. It also evokes the Maloja Snake, the ribbon of fog that descends through the Engadine valley toward St. Moritz.
Vito Schnabel Gallery presents Nebelstreif, an exhibition bringing together works by Spencer Lewis and Markus Lüpertz at the gallery’s St. Moritz location — a dialogue between two painters united by a sustained investigation of space, surface, gesture, and the enduring possibilities of painting.
The title carries a double resonance. In Goethe’s poem, ‘Nebelstreif’ is the father’s word for what the child sees — a streak of mist, the rational explanation that fails to contain the uncanny. It also evokes the Maloja Schlange, the great ribbon of fog that descends through the Engadine valley toward St. Moritz: a phenomenon that shares with both artists’ work a quality of resisting resolution, holding figuration and abstraction in a state of charged ambiguity.
Lewis’ practice has always carried figural suggestions. Earlier compositions were developed at the scale of the body, their crossed structural armatures generating a vaguely anthropomorphic presence. In the works on view, that logic has been absorbed into something denser and less resolved: layered passages of saturated color traversed by interlaced lines, within which figural suggestion surfaces and withdraws. Where Lüpertz moves outward from a mythological subject toward painterly dissolution, Lewis builds from the body into abstraction — the figure present not as image but as residue, a structural memory embedded in the work’s physical making.
For both artists, space is not something represented but something built. The surface becomes an active site where image and material continually negotiate — not a fixed picture, but a record of transformation.
From the exhibition press release, Vito Schnabel Gallery, 2026. Read the full press release
Artists
Spencer Lewis, Markus Lüpertz
Installation views
9 more installation views
Installation view, Nebelstreif, Vito Schnabel Gallery, St. Moritz, 2026. © Spencer Lewis; Markus Lüpertz © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artists and Vito Schnabel Gallery.
Works in the exhibition
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Markus Lüpertz
Walküre, 2024–2025
Mixed media on canvas
31 7/8 × 39 3/8 in (81 × 100 cm)
Ground floor
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Markus Lüpertz
Götterdämmerung, 2024–2025
Oil on canvas
31 7/8 × 39 3/8 in (81 × 100 cm)
Ground floor
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2023
Acrylic, oil, enamel, spray paint and ink on jute
98 × 68 in (248.9 × 172.7 cm)
Ground floor
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2023–2024
Oil, acrylic, enamel, spray paint and ink on jute
98 × 66 × 1 3/4 in (248.9 × 167.6 × 4.4 cm)
Ground floor ·
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Markus Lüpertz
Rheingold, 2024–2025
Mixed media on canvas
31 7/8 × 39 3/8 in (81 × 100 cm)
Ground floor
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2024
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, enamel and ink on jute
98 × 68 × 1 3/4 in (248.9 × 172.7 × 4.4 cm)
Ground floor
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2023
Acrylic, oil, enamel, spray paint and ink on jute
94 × 67 in (238.8 × 170.2 cm)
Office
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Markus Lüpertz
Erlkönigstochter, 2023
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 × 39 3/8 in (80 × 100 cm)
Annex
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2025
Oil, enamel, acrylic and ink on jute
83 × 62 in (210.8 × 157.5 cm)
Annex ·
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2026
Oil, enamel, acrylic and ink on linen
28 × 24 in (71.1 × 61 cm)
Annex
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Markus Lüpertz
Siegfried, 2024–2025
Mixed media on canvas
31 7/8 × 39 3/8 in (81 × 100 cm)
Annex
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2026
Oil, enamel, acrylic and ink on linen
23 3/4 × 26 3/4 × 3 in (60.3 × 67.9 × 7.6 cm), framed
Annex
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Spencer Lewis
Untitled, 2026
Oil, enamel, acrylic and ink on linen
23 3/4 × 26 3/4 × 3 in (60.3 × 67.9 × 7.6 cm), framed
Lower level
Inquiries: stmoritz@vitoschnabel.com