Lumumba
Luc Tuymans
Belgian, born 1958
2000
Lumumba is an oil on canvas portrait in which Luc Tuymans reworks a circulated photographic image to probe how public memory and historical violence are translated through muted, restrained paint.
The face fills the picture plane in thin, hesitant strokes of gray-brown and flesh tones—glasses, shadowed eyes, and a faint mustache emerge from a smeared, almost photographic blur that feels both intimate and distanced.
Typical of Tuymans’s work, this painting examines how mass-media images shape collective memory and the representation of political subjects, using understatement and erasure to make visible the fraught legacy of history and representation.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
24 1/2 x 18" (62.2 x 45.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Fractional and promised gift of Donald L. Bryant, Jr.
Accession
6.2002
Palette
Exhibitions
