Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans (born 14 June 1958) is an artist who lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Tuymans is said to be one of the most influential painters working today.
Life.
Tuymans was born in Mortsel, Belgium. He began his studies at the Sint-Lukasinstituut in Brussels in 1976. He then studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre in Brussels, Belgium (1979–1980) and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium (1980–1982). He stopped painting in 1982 and began studying art history at the Vrije Universiteit, Brussels (1982–6). The Belgian government gave him the title of Commander, Order of Leopold in 2007. He is married to Venezuelan artist Carla Arocha.
Exhibitions.
Tuymans represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 2001. He has been the focus of several retrospectives at various international institutions, including the Műcsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest, Hungary; Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany; the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland; the Tate Modern, London, England (2004); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva, Switzerland (both 2006); and, most recently (2011) the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. The artist’s first U.S. retrospective opened in September 2009 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and travelled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Collections.
Work by the artist is in the public collections of various museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg; Museum fuer Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and the Tate Gallery, London.
Art market.
In 2005, "Sculpture" (2000), part of Tuymans' "Mwana Kitoko: Beautiful White Man" series, was sold at Christie's New York, for $1,472,000.