Roger Raveel : retrospection

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Roger Raveel

Retrospection

The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of Roger Raveel's birth, an ideal opportunity for the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels to look back on the extensive oeuvre of one of Belgium's most important painters of the second half of the twentieth century. A fierce individualist - as curator Franz W. Kaiser so aptly describes the artist - Raveel radically distinguished himself from his contemporaries by developing his own visual language, balancing between figuration and abstraction, and always inspired by his everyday surroundings. Raveel deliberately remained in his hometown, Machelen-aan-de-Leie, throughout his life. This was an idiosyncratic choice at a time when the art world was becoming increasingly international and firmly hailed this internationalism as far superior to any form of local anchoring.

This richly illustrated catalogue illuminates Roger Raveel's unique way of seeing and his exceptional vision of the relationship between art and reality. To bring to light the universal in the everyday : this is perhaps how one might summarise Raveel's artistic aspiration.

Traverse Raveel's own creative path, following his journey through the themes he revisited in various combinations throughout his career : self-portraits, without identity, interior and exterior, striped, modernity in the countryside, closer to nature, the square, Combines, the mirror, the cart and monumental statements.