Ghent painter and enfant terrible, whose work is driven by passion, eroticism and aggression. 1940 Born. Initially studies architecture and later portrait, but leaves the academy. Initially works very quickly and intuitively. 1966 In the television program Teen Sounds of the former BRT, De Bruyne was portrayed in 1966 as an angry young man who fulminated against bailiffs and gendarmes (who threatened to sue because he painted a nude model in front of his children), and 'against the doctors who speaking of clients instead of patients'. He is (if he has none) for sexual freedom and against money, "against the academies that must be destroyed, against abstract and figurative painting". To the question "Are you a pacifist?" Replies the painter "I do not know the word." After which De Bruyne makes a drawing on the fur of a living kid on the sidewalk of a shopping street. " With a painting like De kindervriendjes, De Bruyne shows himself as a social seismograph: five "powerful people" (prelates, politicians, businessmen) maltrait naked children above a luxuriously set table. 1985 In 1985 the painter exhibits in the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle) the canvases he made in Italy and New York, in particular portraits of the American writer and poet Charles Bukowski and portraits of himself with his wife. They lived as bohemians in the Chelsea Hotel. 1991 In 1991 De Bruyne lived for a few weeks in the attic of the Psychiatric Center Dr. Guislain in Ghent and has many contacts with patients. Roland De Bruyne, brother of Dees, worked there at the time. When the artist is asked to hold an exhibition there, his condition is that he stay there for a while with his wife. They live there together in an old dormitory in the girls' department. This is how the paintings of the Madness series come about? The Museum Dr. Guislain is organizing a retrospective of De Bruyne's work in 2015. 1996 In the fall of 1996, De Bruyne developed cancer, and his wife Octavia took care of him. "He fought until the end. He had prepared everything to be able to request euthanasia; that was illegal at the time. But when the time came, he still wanted to live to the end. " 1998 Passed away.