The Valley

Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans often works in thematic series. The silk-screen print The Valley is one of a series about the Jesuits that he made in 2007. The works stem from his fascination with the spiritual power of this religious order organised along military lines that had its heyday during the Counter-Reformation.
The Valley is a portrait of a boy that indirectly illustrates the power relations and restrictive moral codes of the early 1950s. The intimate portrait is based on a still from the film The Village of the Damned, metamorphosed by Tuymans as The Valley (of the Doomed). The work is charged with the characteristic Tuymans tension: the boy is prematurely aged and tormented. He averts his eyes: his gaze, haircut and clothes all bear witness to training and discipline.
The work is composed in a dingy monochrome of yellowish-green tones.
The edition comes together with the book Wenn der Frühling kommt, which is the visual report of the Tuymans exhibition held at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 2008.

Edition Sold

Screenprint on BFK Rives 300 g
Size sheet and image: 71 × 72.5 cm
Printed by Tubbax, Antwerp, under the supervision of Roger Vandaele
Edition of 35 in Roman numerals
Published in 2014

Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is considered one of today’s most influential painters, assuring painting’s enduring legacy by invigorating the medium for a modern context. Born in 1958 in Antwerp, where he lives and works, Tuymans is steeped in the great tradition of Northern European history painting, as well as a modern culture informed by photography, television, and cinema. This is evident in his canvases, where traditional painting collides with contemporary visual strategies, resulting in compositions that adopt technological methods, such as cropping, sequencing, or the close-up, to introduce new perspectives on painting and culture. His seemingly innocuous pictures are often grounded in previously existing imagery drawn from photographs, found images, film stills, and other contemporary visual artifacts.