LUC TUYMANS is a Belgian artist born in Mortsel, in 1958, and he is one of the most important painters of his generation. 

Emerging in the 1980s, Luc pioneered a decidedly non-narrative approach to figurative painting, exploring how information can be layered and embedded within certain scenes and signifiers. Based on preexisting imagery culled from various sources, his works are rendered in a muted palette that is suggestive of a blurry recollection or a fading memory. Their quiet and restrained appearance, however, belies an underlying moral and ethical complexity. They engage equally with questions of history and its representation as they do with everyday issues.

His first major museum presentations were held in 1990 at the Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Ostend, Belgium, and the Vereniging voor het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent. In 1992, Luca participated in Documenta IX in Kassel and had a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, which helped cement his growing reputation in Europe. In 1994, Luc Tuymans: Superstition debuted at Portikus, Frankfurt, and traveled to David Zwirner, New York; the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, establishing him as a major influential artist abroad. In 2001, Luc represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale to great acclaim.

Lucy Tuymans has received numerous awards and honors, including the Medal of Honor, International Congress of Contemporary Painting (ICOCEP), Porto, Portugal, in 2019; the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award, in Zurich in 2000; and the Flemish Culture Award for Visual Arts, in 1993. His works are featured in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Pinault Collection; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Tate, United Kingdom.

Tuymans’s three-volume catalog Raisonné of Paintings, from 1972 to 2018, by Eva Meyer-Hermann, is available from  Yale University Press and David Zwirner Books.

More of Luc’s work may be found on his website

Luc Tuymans lives and works in Antwerp.