Bert De Beul
(Ghent,
1961 )
After studying art history, Bert De Beul worked as a collection manager for the M HKA. From 1992 he devotes himself entirely to painting. It is the year in which Jan Hoet curates Documenta IX and Willy Van den Bussche in Ostend's PMMK Modernism in Painting. Ten Years of Painting in Flanders. For De Beulul, this expo is the first major group exhibition. Like Luc Tuymans - whose work was shown in both exhibitions - De Beul is considered a representative of the pictorial renewal movement known as the “Antwerp School,” or also the “Gray School. This has everything to do with the understated color palette used by these painters. De Beul's neofigurative canvases appear shrouded in mist and appear out of focus. Moreover, because their subjects have been stripped of any distinctive detail, they work in a generalizing way and become almost abstract. For De Beul, the reality underlying his paintings is impenetrable and cannot be represented objectively.
