Untitled (Sculpture)
Luc Tuymans
Belgian, born 1958
2000
A narrow gouache on paper in which Luc Tuymans reduces a sculptural figure to hushed, eroded patches of color, aiming to capture the fragile presence and lingering memory of the subject.
Up close the work reads as a tall, shadowy torso with a turbaned head and crossed arms—brown and ochre washes with pale highlights barely define features so the figure seems to emerge from and dissolve into the deep, muted ground.
This small study exemplifies Tuymans’s influential method—desaturated tones, blurred edges, and a documentary sensibility—that helped renew contemporary figurative painting by showing how modest media can probe memory, history, and the moral weight of images.
Medium
Gouache on paper
Dimensions
11 1/4 x 5 3/8" (28.6 x 13.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by the Friends of Contemporary Drawing
Accession
1170.2001
Palette
Exhibitions
