Biography

Raoul De Keyser was a celebrated Belgian artist known for his subtle watercolors and oil paintings. Using a lexicon of suggestive forms and nuanced color, he created mysterious paintings which shifted between representation and abstraction “De Keyser connects his works to a model, a reference point, a motivation, thus highlighting earlier works, perhaps even critically,” Ulrich Loock wrote of him. “But while the paintings are distinguished by a moment of mnemonic recurrence, the referentiality remains strangely inconclusive, since one cannot tell what the model refers to.” Born on August 29, 1930 in Deinze, Belgium he went on to study under the artist Roger Raveel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Deinze. Though he cited the American painter Al Held as an early influence, De Keyser ultimately rejected many of the prevailing theories and trends in painting during his career. The artist’s exhibitions were mainly limited to Belgium for most of his life, but he began to experience international acclaim following his inclusion in the documenta 9 exhibition in 1992. The artist died on October 6, 2012 in Deinze, Belgium. Today, his work are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, among others.