“A wizard with the brush, the virtuoso among our painters. If he paints a rolling wave on the canvas, you feel like diving into it.” - DE STANDAARD

Following the major retrospective in mudel ('Museum of Deinze and the Leie region), this book by Michel Buylen (b. 1953) brings together around a hundred works spanning his entire career, some of them never before published. Michel Buylen is a versatile and idiosyncratic painter who continues to surprise with his startling virtuosity and his innovative perspective on centuries-old subjects such as the nude, the child, the landscape and the sea. Using acrylics, he succeeds in reinterpreting life in all its richness and nuances, and enriching it with his own vision. Each new work forms a window onto a reality made sublime, distant and alienating.

With textual contributions from Professor Emeritus Paul Huvenne, honorary head of conservation at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), Professor Maximiliaan Martens, curator of the Van Eyck exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent (MSK Gent), and Wim Lammertijn, director of mudel. Publication to accompany the eponymous exhibition in Mudel from 25 June to 12 September 2021. In collaboration with mudel, Deinze and Galerie De Zwarte Panter, Antwerp. 

Text in English and Dutch.

Michel Buylen (Ghent, °1953) is a multi-faceted and headstrong painter, who never ceases to astonish with both his amazing virtuosity and his new take on centuries-old subjects; such as the nude, the child, the landscape, the sea as an obligate abstraction and the portrait as compromise and confrontation. Michel Buylen is anything but a conventional artist. Aided by acrylic, he succeeds in re-translating life, in all its diversity and nuances, enriching it with his own vision. Each new work forms a window to a sublimated reality, sometimes poetic and moving, often distant and surprising. It is this combination of vulnerable beauty and mysterious estrangement that gives Buylen a unique place within Belgium’s contemporary art scene. Since 1992 Michel Buylen has been represented by Galerie De Zwarte Panter, Antwerp, and is a Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Arts and Sciences, Class of the Arts.