Luc Tuymans (born 14 June 1958) is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it.

[1] His subjects range from major historical events such as the Holocaust to the seemingly inconsequential or banal: wallpaper, Christmas decorations or everyday objects for example.

Images are repeatedly analysed and distilled, and a large number of drawings, photocopies and watercolours are produced in preparation for his oil paintings.

[12][13][14] This fact echoed through family conversations, raising moral questions and feelings of guilt, and the subject became a source of fascination and fear, later playing a key role in Tuymans' painting.

[15] His interest in art manifested itself at a young age, and his ability was first recognised during a summer holiday in Zundert, when he won a drawing competition.

[19] During the crucial first phase of Tuymans' artistic development, his painting method evolved rapidly, and his first solo and group exhibitions took place.

[32] As Meyer-Hermann wrote in the catalogue raisonné, the artist first elucidated his theoretical approach in an unrealized proposal for a group exhibition, entitled Virus of the Vanities.

Here, he defines key terms and develops a dialectic between the 'virus' as representative of the 'cult', and 'vanity' as a projection of 'culture', also opposing the 'anecdotal' (as in the portrait or still life) to the 'symbolic' (as in representations of time or death).

[33] Since 1995 Tuymans' international renown grew, and he participated in over 140 group exhibitions and had 47 solo shows in Europe, North America, and Asia.

[34] His exhibition Heimat, held in 1995 at the Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp and the Musée des Beaux Arts in Nantes, was a response to political events in Flanders and targeted Flemish nationalism.

[35] In a later 2014 interview discussing the Heimat series with De Witte Raaf he expressed his particular dislike of the separatist, far-right Flemish political party the Vlaams Blok (Flemish block), which achieved its best electoral result to date in Antwerp in 1994, stating: 'I was ashamed that I was from Antwerp!’[36] In 1996, Tuymans' exhibition Heritage, held at the David Zwirner Gallery, consisted of ten new paintings of the same title, all inspired by the mood that prevailed in the U.S. following the Oklahoma City bombing.

[37] In 2000, Tuymans attracted attention with his series of political paintings Mwana Kitoko (Beautiful Boy), inspired by King Baudouin of Belgium's state visit to the Congo in the 1950s.

[41] Between 2006 and 2008, solo exhibitions devoted to Tuymans were held in diverse locations: at Műcsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest in 2007–08; at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2008.

Tuymans contributed the painting Die Nacht (2012), which refers to Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's epic 1985 film installation on German history.

In 1940, the building was part of the Otwock ghetto, and in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, its inhabitants either died of starvation, were shot, or were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp.

'With visual similarities to Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808, 1814, Tuymans' strong highlighting of central figures encased by a blackened, scruffy vignette suggests a diaspora, revolution, or an uneasy static mob.

The British newspaper The Guardian supported the artist in this dispute, commenting on the way Tuymans never makes photorealistic representations of original photos, and describing how 'his work bears witness to a career-long survey of all images.

This work was produced by Fantini Mosaici in Milan and is based on Tuymans' eponymous oil on canvas dated 1989 representing a German forced-labour camp.

[56] Tuymans experimented with printmaking from the late 1980s on, producing a graphic oeuvre of about 90 works, which focus – like his paintings – on the mediation and translation of images in the mass media.

The first exhibition he curated was Trouble Spot: Painting in 1999 at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen and the NICC – New International Centre in Antwerp.

[34] In an interview with Artzip, he explained that the idea behind the exhibition was 'to explore the boundaries of painting' and that his curatorial approach was to 'prioritize the visual in order to create a dialogue between different works.

In 2007 Tuymans curated the exhibition The Forbidden Empire: Visions of the World by Chinese and Flemish Artists at BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels.

As stated on Phaidon's website, Tuymans' starting point for this exhibition was the difference between the cities of Bruges and Warsaw: one survived World War II relatively unscathed, the other was decimated, then carefully reconstructed.

In 2003, Tuymans held a public talk at the Kunstverein Hannover, and in 2004 he lectured at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (with Gerrit Vermeiren), at the Mauritshuis in The Hague where he gave a lecture entitled On Peter Paul Rubens, at the deSingel in Antwerp as part of the program Curating the Library, and at the Dresdner Bank in Berlin during the conference Europa eine Seele geben: Berliner Konferen für europaïsche Kulturpolitik.

In 2009, he took part in the Interdisciplinary Conference at NCCR in Basel; the Coloquim Abschied und Gegenstand during the Platform Project at Wiels in Brussels, and the Lambert Family Lecture, in conversation with T.J. Clark at the Wexner Center in Columbus.

[20][34][40] The first exhibition of Tuymans' paintings, for the Belgian Art Review (1985), took place in Ostend in a deserted swimming pool at the prestigious Thermae Palace.

[70] Tuymans chose Ostend because of James Ensor and Leon Spilliaert, two painters who had a profound influence on his artistic development and whose connection with the city gave it a spiritual significance for him.

[20] In 2019, a comprehensive catalogue raisonné edited by the art historian Eva Meyer-Hermann was published by the David Zwirner Gallery and Yale University Press.

[83] In May 2005, Sculpture (2000), part of Tuymans' Mwana Kitoko (Beautiful White Man) series, was sold at Christie's New York for a record price.

[11] In 1995, he met the Venezuelan artist Carla Arocha while working on his first American show at The Renaissance Society in Chicago and four years later, in 1999, they married.