Following a warm reception for Tuymans thrown by Chicago's Honorary Belgian Consul - peppered with Belgians who live in the "windy city" - the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago opened the exhibition of about 75 paintings on 2 October. Luc Tuymans occupies the museum's entire fourth floor.

"My first show in the US was in Chicago back in 1995," he said during a speech at his reception. "At that show, I met my wife Carla during a cigarette break outside. That is why, in life, you should never quit."

Chicago is the last stop on an American tour, following Columbus, Ohio; San Francisco, California; and Dallas, Texas, before coming home to go on show in Brussels next February. Dallas was a good experience, Tuymans says. "They have New York money but aren't pretentious."

Chicago, though, is the only stop at which Tuymans also curated complementary exhibits of cinema (not his, though he used to dabble) and sources of his paintings (like Polaroids). He is also painting a mural on the museum's second-floor atrium based on Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce.

"So much of Luc's work deals with history, so it's great to have him in Chicago, a city of history," says Museum of Contemporary Art curator Madeleine Grynsztejn, who has known Tuymans for many years. "He is big on breaking memory conditioning. You'll see a painting of a skier and think, ‘hey, skiing is fun', but then you see that it is really a painting of [Nazi architect] Albert Speer."

The US is a strong market for Tuymans, who says that his exclusive opening for potential buyers "went well".
Popularly remembered as a city of gangsters and blues musicians, Chicago nowadays is abound with private galleries and young artists cruising to them atop brightly collared bicycles. One such met Tuymans at his opening reception. "He's such an inspiration to all of us," she says.

Luc Tuymans
Until 9 January Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
www.mcachicago.org