Luc Tuymans (Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series)

Luc Tuymans is 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 keys surveys of contemporary painting.