Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is considered one of the most significant European painters of his generation and he has been an enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. Born and raised in Antwerp, where he lives and works, Tuymans is an inheritor to the vast tradition of Northern European painting. At the same time, as a child of the 1950s, his relationship to the medium is understandably influenced by photography, television, and cinema. Interested in the lingering effects of World War II on the lives of Europeans, Tuymans explores issues of history and memory, as well as the relationship between photography and painting, using a muted palette to create canvases that are simultaneously withholding and disarmingly stark. Drawing on imagery from photography, television, and film, his distinctive compositions make ingenious use of cropping, close-ups, framing, and Luc Tuymans sequencing, offering fresh perspectives on the medium of painting, as well as larger cultural issues.

Luc Tuymans has been working with Zeno X Gallery from 1990 onwards. He has been the focus of numerous retrospectives at various international institutions, including Mucsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest (HU), Haus der Kunst in Munich (DE), Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (PL) and the first comprehensive U.S. retrospective at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The last venue of this exhibition was Bozar in Brussels.

In 2011 Tuymans created the mosaic Dead Skull in the square in front of MAS in Antwerp. In 2015 he made a similar but much larger mosaic for a public square in Qatar, where he will also have a solo exhibition. Previous major solo shows include those organised by the Tate Modern, London (GB), Wiels, Brussels (BE), The Menil Collection, Houston (US) and Moderna Museet, Malmö (SE), amongst many others. Tuymans represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 2001, and his works are featured in the collections of prominent institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Tate Gallery, London.

Luc Tuymans joined the gallery in 1990.

Text courtesy Zeno X Gallery.