Luc Tuymansis a Belgian artist who emerged in the late 1980s. Tuymans is one of the world’s most prominent figures in contemporary painting although he has also worked in other media. His work fuses the traditions of Old Master Flemish and Spanish genre painting with ideas and images drawn from recent history. Tuymans’ monochromatic palette and choice of subject matter - domestic interiors, commonplace objects, the margins of history or family portraits - link painting with filmmaking, photojournalism and amateur photography. The source of his imagery, however, some of which derives from documentation of Nazi atrocities, gives his canvases a brooding violence. Modest in scale and sensitive in execution, this work is powerful in its haunting evocation of lost lives and repressed histories...

Luc Tuymansis a Belgian artist who emerged in the late 1980s. Tuymans is one of the world’s most prominent figures in contemporary painting although he has also worked in other media. His work fuses the traditions of Old Master Flemish and Spanish genre painting with ideas and images drawn from recent history. Tuymans’ monochromatic palette and choice of subject matter - domestic interiors, commonplace objects, the margins of history or family portraits - link painting with filmmaking, photojournalism and amateur photography. The source of his imagery, however, some of which derives from documentation of Nazi atrocities, gives his canvases a brooding violence. Modest in scale and sensitive in execution, this work is powerful in its haunting evocation of lost lives and repressed histories. Tuymans’ work has featured in many key surveys of contemporary painting, such as ’Examining Pictures’, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and tour, 1999; ’Trouble Spot. Painting’ (which he also curated), Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, 1999; ’Dear Painter, Paint Me’, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2002; and ’The Triumph of Painting’, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2005. In 2004 Tuymans’ work was the subject of a major solo exhibition at Tare Modern, London.

Interview

Juan Vicente Aliaga in conversation with Luc Tuymans, page 6.

Survey

Ulrich Loock On layers of sign-relations, in the light of mechanically reproduced pictures, from ten years of exhibitions, page32.

Focus

Nancy Spector The Unforgiving Trace, page 94.

Artist’s Choice

Andrei Platonov Chevengur (extract), 1928, page 102.

Artist’s Writings

LucTuymans Disenchantment, 1991, page 110.

Update

Hans Rudolf Reust The Pursuit: Luc Tuymans 1996-2003, page 148.

Chronology

page 240 & Bibliography, page 258.