William Ludwig Lutgens lives and works in Antwerp. He is honoured with a Laureate at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts, HISK (2017). He holds a Master of Research in Art (2015) and a Master in Graphic Design (2013) both from Sint. Lucas in Antwerp. He has presented solo exhibitions nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous private and public collections including; the Collection of the Flemish Government, Collection of The Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art / S.M.A.K. Ghent, Collezione Taurisano, and Collectie De Bruin-Heijn.
Lutgen's practice spans several techniques and materials including painting on paper, canvas, aluminium, and wood applying acrylic, oil, spray paint, and watercolour sometimes in the same work. His paintings reflect fragments of society both political, historical, and social. Lutgens is occupied with people, our human behaviour is both socially learned and biologically inherited. He portrays human needs, desires, bodily wastes, fluids, and repressed emotions and fantasies. His characters, animals, and figures are carnal in appearance and their physicality is emphasized by his wavy playful contour lines. In the works, there seems to be a longing for freedom to break out of the limitations of the body and psyche. He draws inspiration from many places, for example, the less nice and hidden sides of history, including Belgium's colonial past. He also finds inspiration in fragments of conversations he has overheard, the TV's constant news flow, or poems and stories he has read. They merge in his paintings and form space for new narratives. The aesthetic expression draws lines back to the classical Belgian and Dutch baroque painting tradition and Fauvism's expressive use of colour and light. William Ludwig Lutgen's painterly universe exhibits our vulnerability and repressed human needs and desires in a satirical way, but with a seriousness and reflection of depth which is always present underneath the surface.