Walter Swennen
22 Jun - 08 Sep 2013
WALTER SWENNEN
22 June - 8 September 2013
Curator: Miguel Wandschneider
Portuguese audiences are by now familiar with the work of two Belgian artists who in recent decades have become major references in the field of painting: Raoul De Keyser and Luc Tuymans. There is, however, another Belgian painter who is greatly admired in his own country, particularly by other artists, but who has yet to be picked up by the radars of the international art world: Walter Swennen (Brussels, 1946). This exhibition is a retrospective of his work since the early 1980s, when the artist decided to put an end to his activity as a poet and adopt painting as his preferred means of expression. In his painting, closely linked to his own experiences and different psychological states, Swennen has gradually been constructing a highly subjective view of the world, full of humour and melancholy, in a constant dispersal of styles and giving special emphasis to improvisation as a modus operandi. The remarkable way in which the artist has expanded his repertoire of formal and expressive solutions over the past fifteen years has only been made possible by his ever greater mastery of his medium and his keener awareness of the specific problems of painting.
This exhibition is organised in partnership with the WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, in Brussels, where it will be presented in October of this year.
22 June - 8 September 2013
Curator: Miguel Wandschneider
Portuguese audiences are by now familiar with the work of two Belgian artists who in recent decades have become major references in the field of painting: Raoul De Keyser and Luc Tuymans. There is, however, another Belgian painter who is greatly admired in his own country, particularly by other artists, but who has yet to be picked up by the radars of the international art world: Walter Swennen (Brussels, 1946). This exhibition is a retrospective of his work since the early 1980s, when the artist decided to put an end to his activity as a poet and adopt painting as his preferred means of expression. In his painting, closely linked to his own experiences and different psychological states, Swennen has gradually been constructing a highly subjective view of the world, full of humour and melancholy, in a constant dispersal of styles and giving special emphasis to improvisation as a modus operandi. The remarkable way in which the artist has expanded his repertoire of formal and expressive solutions over the past fifteen years has only been made possible by his ever greater mastery of his medium and his keener awareness of the specific problems of painting.
This exhibition is organised in partnership with the WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, in Brussels, where it will be presented in October of this year.