Luc Tuymans
Dead Skull
2010
Screenprint on Velin BFK Rives 250 gram
40 × 40 cm
Edition of 60 copies, signed and numbered by the artist
Out of stock
about this work
Dead Skull has been published on the occasion of the inauguration on May 17th, 2010 of a 40-square-meter stone mosaic by Luc Tuymans, located in front of the MAS (Museum aan de Stroom), the newly built archaeology & history museum of the City of Antwerp. The image picked by Luc Tuymans for the immense mosaic square is that of his own 2002 painting Dead Skull, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This Tuymans work points to the history of the city of Antwerp, by using as its source image, a commemorative 17th-century stone plate – affixed to the facade of Antwerp Cathedral – in memory of Quentin Metsys (1466-1530), an Early Renaissance painter and “founder” of the Antwerp School of Painting.
about Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans is considered one of the most significant European painters of his generation and has been an enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. Tuymans is an inheritor to the vast tradition of Northern European painting, while his relationship to the medium was strongly influenced by photography, television, and cinema. He paints distinctive compositions, consisting of ingenious use of cropping, close-ups and framing. By means of a muted palette, his easily recognizable, sparsely coloured, figurative canvases have redefined the traditional genres of everyday and history painting.
Through a filmic or photographic gaze, Tuymans retakes heavily loaded themes from the recent past and examines footage on their deceptive authenticity, which often results in ambiguous and disorienting paintings. Frequently the notion of power and violence can be considered a leitmotiv throughout his artistic oeuvre.
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