When Luc Tuymans was invited to temporarily replace two paintings by Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto at Venice’s San Giorgio Maggiore Basilica, the Belgian artist agreed on the basis that, 'they would never be religious.' Working with a speed reminiscent of Tintoretto – nicknamed il Furioso for the urgency with which he applied paint to canvas – Tuymans completed his largest ever paintings, each measuring nearly twenty foot in length, in just one month.
For decades, San Giorgio has been commissioning contemporary artists to present work within its celebrated architecture, but unlike the imposing standalone works by previous artists, including Anish Kapoor, Sean Scully or Berlinde de Bruyckere, Tuymans’ intervention feels more subtle and site specific. As he himself remarks of the new paintings: 'they're not in an unexpected place, but they are unexpected in their place.'