Originally trained as a printmaker, Swennen’s early career revolved around poetry, philosophy and artistic happenings.

[3] Swennen sees each canvas as an exercise in painting, a place where ‘the artist simultaneously moves, thinks and acts’.

[7] Swennen started painting classes at the age of fourteen while attending the Saint-Louis College in Brussels.

After high school, Swennen enrolled as a philosophy student at the Saint-Louis University, Brussels but quit after one year and moved on to the engraving department of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

[9] Reading Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto prompted Swennen into a three year long period of ephemeral actions and collaborations: he participated in Au pied de la lettre, a happening centered on the pitfalls of poetic communication, organised and hosted by Broodthaers.

[10][11] When studying Psychology at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Swennen organised several politically charged happenings off-campus and he formed the short-lived Groupe Accuse.

In 1981, he was selected for the national award show for young painters at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels.

That same year, Gallery Patrick Verelst gave Swennen his first solo show, followed in 1982 by two group shows focused on contemporary painting in Belgium: La Magie de l’image/De Magie van het beeld, at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, and Le Désir pictural/Het Picturaal verlangen, at Galerie Isy Brachot in Brussels.

The work Swennen exhibited combined action painting with a simplified multiplicity of languages, embracing chance when choosing subject matter.

[13] In 1984, Swennen moved to Antwerp and the following years are marked by a number of exhibitions: a gallery exhibition at Micheline Szwajcer (1984); the Vereniging voor het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent (1984) and his first solo presentation at a public institution, the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (1986).

(…) The key: premeditation is always an aggravating circumstance.’[15] This idea comes from the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who replaced Freud’s ‘ground-rule’, whereby patients were requested to share with their analyst ‘whatever they thought of’, with an invitation ‘to say anything, without fear of stupidity’.

This idea provided him with a way of creating work that was wholly conceived from the point of view of the maker (as opposed to that of the spectator), freed from the so-called necessity to express, share or demonstrate something.

No matter what it depicts, it is always about a painting.’[18] That same year, Swennen received his second solo exhibition in a public institution at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi (1991), curated by Laurent Busine.

[20] For La Belgique visionnaire/Visionair België – C’est arrivé près de chez nous (2005) at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, curated by Harald Szeemann before he passed away, Swennen contributed a painting depicting a skull and a funnel— the conventional headpiece of a fool—is integrated into an almost self-deprecating narrative which alludes to Belgium’s distinctly split personality.

[20] Swennen started a collaboration with Nicolas Krupp gallery in Basel in 2006 and was awarded the prize for the best national exhibition by the Brussels Foundation for the Arts for his solo show at Galerie Nadja Vilenne in Liège (2007).

The Kunstverein Freiburg organised Swennen’s first institutional solo (2011) show outside the Benelux,[22] followed by Continuer (2013), Culturgest in Lisbon.

[26] Other international solo exhibitions followed, including Ein perfektes Alibi, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015);[27] White Columns, New York, NY, USA (2017)[28] and La pittura farà da sé, La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2018).

[citation needed] In 2017, Violaine de Villers made a documentary on Swennen, entitled La langue rouge (The Crimson Tongue).

[34] Swennen has been the focus of several retrospectives at various international institutions, including La pittura farà da sé, La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2018); White Columns, New York, NY, USA (2017); Ein perfektes Alibi, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015); So Far So Good, WIELS, Brussels (2013–14); Continuer, Culturgest Lisbon (2013); Garibaldi Slept Here, Kunstverein Freiburg (2012); How To Paint A Horse, Cultuurcentrum Strombeek; De Garage, Mechelen (2008); MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium (1994) and Schilderijen, Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (1994) and Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium (1986).