Nathan Chantob is not alone in grappling with the tensions between tradition and modernity, fragility and power, figuration and abstraction. Around him, a generation of artists from across the globe are reimagining the human figure with fresh urgency. This article introduces five contemporary painters whose work resonates with Chantob’s themes while carving out their own distinctive paths.

Luc Tuymans is often cited as one of the most influential European painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Born in Mortsel, Belgium, Tuymans is known for his restrained palette, blurred surfaces, and hauntingly understated approach to figuration. Emerging in the 1980s, his work offered a stark counterpoint to the bold colors of Neo-Expressionism, aligning instead with a subdued realism that engages memory, history, and trauma. His paintings frequently revisit historical subjects—from World War II to colonialism—yet they do so obliquely, avoiding direct representation in favor of suggestion and atmosphere. Critics often align Tuymans with artists like Gerhard Richter, though his more muted brushwork situates him firmly in the lineage of Flemish painting, particularly the shadowed subtleties of 17th-century masters. In the context of Chantob, Tuymans’s art demonstrates how figuration can remain politically and psychologically charged, even in its quietest gestures.

London-born Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has become a central figure in contemporary figurative painting. Of Ghanaian descent, she is acclaimed for her portraits of fictional characters painted from memory rather than from life. Her muted yet luminous color palettes and the timeless quality of her figures align her practice with the traditions of European portraiture—recalling artists from Édouard Manet to John Singer Sargent—while also breaking from them by refusing specific narratives or settings. The subjects in her paintings are anonymous, existing in spaces that feel both historical and contemporary, suspended outside of linear time. By focusing on fictionalized Black figures, she not only reclaims space in the canon of painting but also creates images of intimacy and quiet introspection. Her work resonates with Chantob’s solitary portraits, though Yiadom-Boakye’s calm, deliberate brushwork contrasts with his raw and trembling lines.

Born in Miami, Florida, Hernan Bas is known for his lush, narrative paintings that often center on young men depicted in dreamlike or melancholic settings. His work draws on Symbolism and Romanticism, echoing artists like Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and even Caspar David Friedrich, but refracted through a contemporary queer lens. Bas’s canvases are filled with detail—swamps, forests, interiors—that act as psychological landscapes as much as physical spaces. Themes of solitude, longing, and vulnerability pervade his work, connecting him to Chantob’s exploration of fragile individuality within larger social contexts. At the same time, Bas’s paintings are richly theatrical, situating him in dialogue with both 19th-century decadence and 21st-century identity politics. His art proves how figuration can simultaneously revive older traditions and inject them with contemporary relevance.

Hailing from Harlem, New York, Tschabalala Self has emerged as a powerful voice in contemporary art with her bold, hybrid approach to figuration. Her works combine painting, fabric collage, and printmaking to create monumental bodies that challenge conventions of representation. Self’s figures are unapologetically constructed—patchworks of color, texture, and form—that recall both the improvisational spirit of assemblage and the flattened stylization of artists like Henri Matisse and Romare Bearden. Yet her art is profoundly contemporary, rooted in explorations of Black femininity, sexuality, and identity in the 21st century. In relation to Chantob, Self offers a radically different handling of the human body: where Chantob’s fragility vibrates through trembling lines, Self’s strength radiates through layered surfaces and exaggerated forms. Both, however, return to the urgency of figuration as a means to address what it means to exist visibly in a fractured world.

The youngest of this group, Anna Weyant was born in Calgary, Canada, and has quickly risen to international attention with her uncanny, doll-like figures. Her paintings often recall the still lifes and interiors of 17th-century Dutch painting, while also carrying the eerie psychological undertones of Surrealism. Weyant’s subjects—often young women rendered with a porcelain-like delicacy—exist in states of vulnerability, awkwardness, or dark humor. Her careful technique links her to Old Masters, while her unsettling themes place her firmly in contemporary conversations around gender, representation, and power. If Chantob’s faces confront the viewer with raw density, Weyant’s bodies confront us with fragility, secrecy, and unease. Her meteoric rise also reflects the ongoing hunger for figurative painting that bridges tradition and the uncanny present.

Together, these five painters—Luc Tuymans, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Hernan Bas, Tschabalala Self, and Anna Weyant—illustrate the breadth of contemporary approaches to figuration across continents. From Belgium to Britain, from Miami to Harlem to Calgary, each artist reinterprets the human figure through the lenses of memory, solitude, identity, and vulnerability. Seen alongside Nathan Chantob, they remind us that the return to painting the human form is neither nostalgic nor reactionary, but instead a deeply contemporary project. It is through these varied lenses—quiet restraint, suspended fiction, queer romanticism, hybrid assemblage, and uncanny intimacy—that today’s art continues to wrestle with the question of what it means to be human. Come to the Galerie de Buci before the 25th of October to see Nathan's work!