Francis Ruyter

Francis Ruyter, an American painter and gallerist, was born in 1968 in Washington D.C., USA. He studied Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1990. Following this, he was enrolled in the Hunter College Graduate Fine Arts Program from 1991 to 1992.

Francis Ruyter's Art Style

Since 1996, Francis Ruyter's paintings have been rooted in individual photographs that undergo editing, refinement, and transcription onto canvas. Despite being painted with a brush or manually cut and printed in the case of his editioned woodcuts, they exude distant technical objectivity. His artistic process seamlessly integrates new media and technologies with traditional drawing, painting, and printmaking techniques.

For several years, he has been engaged with the Library of Congress's FSA archive of Depression-era photographs. Utilizing this image archive as a primary source, Ruyter transforms stark black-and-white photographic icons into vividly colored paintings or relief prints.

Exhibitions of Francis Ruyter's Works

Francis Ruyter has exhibited his art widely. His solo exhibitions have been held at various prestigious galleries and museums worldwide, including Bureaucracy Studies in Lausanne, Neuer Kunstverein Wien in Vienna, Galeria Senda in Barcelona, Cristea Roberts Gallery in London, Leeahn Gallery in Seoul and Daegu, Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, and many more esteemed venues.

Additionally, Ruyter's works have been featured in numerous group shows, including "God in Reverse: When Wisdom Defies Capture" at The Richmond Art Gallery in Richmond (2020), "Spaces of No Control" at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York (2020), "City Fabrics" at ARCC in Vienna (2018), "This is the Sea" at Big Mak / artmonte-carlo salon d’art in Monaco (2017), among others.