Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has been invited to create a temporary work for one of the best-known museums in the world.
Luc Tuymans. CC BY-SA 3.0 (Marc Wathieu)
Luc Tuymans is a visual artist known for his exploration of moral complexity and our relationship with history. His visual art, which is typically described as figurative, has taken him to exhibitions around the world. Now he’s been invited to paint one of the walls of the Louvre.
The work of art in question is called L’Orphelin (The Orphan) and is made up of four panels depicting the cleaning of a palette. The frescoes are imposing, standing at five metres tall and four wide.
He spent ten days painting the walls of the Valentin de Boulogne rotunda, near the Flemish Masters, showing up on weekdays from 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 PM. That said, he did a lot of his preliminary work in Belgium, in his workshop in Antwerp.
That includes testing and mixing the paint he used. For the first time in his long and celebrated career, Tuymans has used fast-drying theatre paint rather than the oil-based paint that he’s used to.
Fast-drying though the paint may be, the celebrated Belgian’s artwork will not grace the walls of the Louvre forever, as it will be removed after the exhibition, which will carry on until May 2025.
Congratulations to this talented Belgian visual artist on a monumental achievement.
