Influential Belgian painter died in 79

Walter Swennen, an artist of poets who later directed his interest in language to wild, weird paintings, died at the age of 79. His gallery, Xavier Hufkens, announced his death, which was not specified for the cause.

Swennen became famous in Belgium with a series of painters interested in the properties of medium materials. But unlike many of his fellow countrymen, Sweenn’s art is more freer and more interesting, full of written phrases that seem to be jokes but do not immediately give it meaning. Apart from these mysterious words, in various languages, Sweenne sometimes draws what seems to be borrowed from comic books.

Many of his paintings are interesting. A sentence from 2015 illustrates the word “feeding fish” in big red letters, followed by the second phrase in cursive script: “Attached at your own expense.” Another feature is a set of twisted arms that form the fuck you Bra D’Honneur gesture. The other is that the banana peels off on the black blank, seemingly positioned so that someone can slide down on it.

His paintings tend to unstable language. Critic Mark Prince American Art. “English, French and Flemish speak to each other. The abstraction of the word stage is abstract and is an embodiment of undeniable visual paintings.”

Swennen approaches this anomaly material by painting in strange ways. Instead of using traditional wooden support for his canvas, Swennen often provides the wood and plastic found. Sometimes he even put the canvas entirely on wood or metal.

He said in the interview that his approach was partly about the comments about “good” in painting. He told him: “I do try to paint my tastes – not only for ‘good tastes’, but also for my tastes with a spirit of rejection,” he told him. frize In 2016. “It’s hard to paint the taste. But for a long time, painting has been difficult.”

When he began finding loyal followers in New York in the 2010s, his non-domestic humor had already attracted Belgian critics and artists. Sweining began exhibiting at the Gladstone Gallery in 2015 after his first solo performance in New York at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York. New York Times “Mr. Sweenn seems to have found maturity, determined to extract the greatest beauty and humor from the least paint,” wrote art critic Roberta Smith.

Walter Swennen was born in 1946 in the forest in Belgium. When he was 5, his parents decided to let their son start speaking French rather than Flemish, instilling Swennen’s interest in speech, language and meaning. After graduating from high school, he studied philosophy and carving before pursuing his degree in psychology at the University of Rwanda.

In the 1960s, he began writing poetry, which attracted the attention of artists such as Marcel Broodthaers. During this time, Sweenn also began to paint and paint, but it was not until the 1980s that he was fully committed to the painting career.

In his frize “I’m glad I’m a painter because I don’t think the painter has to talk. Anyway, I’ve been painting and learning to paint privately since the 1960s.” Still, he seemed uncomfortable with the idea that he finally became a painter. He noted that he was “not really the art world”, adding: “More importantly, I don’t have a trademark style, which is a problem for galleries and collectors.”

Also in this interview, Swennen praised a travel retrospective that visited the Centre for Contemporary Art in Brussels in 2013 and started his career over. He said young artists started looking at his work, and dealer Barbara Gladstone had a space in Brussels, whose work was his work.

He suddenly started showing at Blue Chip Gallery: Xavier Hufkens started showing him in 2014, and Gladstone will continue to give him three solos. One of the Gladstone exhibitions also coincides with the exhibition held at White Counters, an alternative space in New York.

Swennen’s resume does not list the two largest recurring art exhibitions in the world, the Venice Biennale or Documenta. But his influence on young artists is clear: Sanya Kantarovsky included Swennen’s work in a group performance for the late New York Gallery Metro Pictures, where Mathew Cerletty and Mathew Cerletty and Eddie Martinez were two generations of painters at Swennen, and two Swennen Junior’s painters showed off their art.

Sweenn is frize His performance from Gladstone gave him an international success flavor. “I know what it is to live like a king,” he said. “I want to be king one day every week!”