Luc Tuymans
(Antwerp,
1958 )
Luc Tuymans is a Belgian painter who contributed to the international revaluation of painting from the second half of the 1980s onwards. Typical of Tuymans’s oeuvre are his historically, socially or politically inspired subjects, stylistically elaborated in a subdued colour palette. Although the artist had already achieved some fame, it was his participation at the invitation of Jan Hoet at Documenta IX in Kassel that put him on the world map. In 2001 Tuymans represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale. Luc Tuymans’s work is included in prestigious private collections and renowned museum collections worldwide, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London. Tuymans made his first mosaic in his hometown in 2010: a giant piece conceived on the square in front of the MAS. The higher you go inside the building, the clearer the image of Dead Skull emerges, an image Tuymans derived from a memorial stone in the façade of Antwerp’s Cathedral of Our Lady. The University of Antwerp awarded Luc Tuymans an honorary doctorate for general merit in 2006.
