As part of the cycle of monographic shows dedicated to major contemporary artists, launched in 2012 and alternating with thematic exhibitions of the Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi presents Luc Tuymans’ first solo exhibition in Italy.

Curated by Caroline Bourgeois in collaboration with Luc Tuymans, the show is entitled 

, after Curzio Malaparte’s 1949 novel, which also gave its name to one of Luc Tuymans’ paintings. It includes over 80 works from the Pinault Collection, international museums and private collections, and focuses on the artist’s paintings from 1986 to today.

Considered as one of the most influential painters of the international art scene, Luc Tuymans has been dedicating himself to figurative painting since the mid 1980s and has contributed throughout his career to the rebirth of this medium in contemporary art. His works deal with questions connected to the past and to more recent history and address subjects of our daily lives through a set of images borrowed from the private and public spheres – the press, television, the Internet. The artist renders these images by dissolving them in an unusual and rarefied light; the slight anxiety that emanates from them is able to trigger—according to the artist himself—an ‘authentic forgery’ of reality.

The exhibition project corresponds to the eighth ‘carte blanche’ given by the Pinault Collection to its artists as an invitation to conceive major monographic exhibitions presented in Venice. Luc Tuymans also unveils a site-specific work created specifically for the spaces of Palazzo Grassi.

A detail of a painting by Luc Tuymans titled Twenty Seventeen, dated 2017.

Palazzo Grassi, Venice

La Pelle

presents a new commission for the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The largest canvases produced by the artist to date, the two new paintings will occupy walls which usually feature Tintoretto’s 

(c. 1593), while they undergo restoration. Unlike Tintoretto’s masterworks, Tuymans’s paintings do not deal with biblical subject matter directly, but rather underscore a disjuncture between appearance and reality. The artist will also present a contemporary illuminated manuscript. 

The presentation is commissioned by the Benedictine Community, led by Abbot Stefano Visintin osb, and Draiflessen Collection, and marks a return to Venice for Tuymans after his critically acclaimed retrospective, 

Installation view, Luc Tuymans, Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy, 2025

Installation view of Luc Tuymans at Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice, Italy, dated 2025.

Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy

Luc Tuymans: Commission at Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.