Raoul De Keyser * Lot n° 230

(Deinze, Belgium 1930 – 2012) The Unanswered Question, 1972, titled, signed and dated on the reverse, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm, on stretcher Provenance: acquired directly from the artist by the father of the present owner in 1973 – European Private Collection Exhibited: Brussels, Vereinigin voor Tentoonstellingen van het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Approches de la réalité/ Zien en Weergeven, 29 November - 20 December 1972, exh. cat. no. 4 without ill., (label on the reverse) Brussels, Flemish Parliament, 2011, Raoul De Keyser. De Dingen die ik Zie/ The Things I See. Texts by Robert Hoozee and Paul Robbrecht, page 32, ill. Literature: Steven Jacobs, Raoul De Keyser: Retour 1964 -2006, Ludion, Ghent, 2008, page 252, ill. page 107. „De Keyser was not a heroic, virtuoso painter but an artist who sought the unanticipated intimate encounter with the canvas in a pragmatic and yet playful way. The artist refused any method but took a random situation as an opportunity to start painting. Starting with a rough idea of painting, by experimenting and observing, De Keyser explored the results which are still unknown. Painting as an unpredictable experience that transforms thought and sight into paint.” Philippe Van Cauteren, “Letter: to Raoul De Keyser”, in: Raoul De Keyser. Oeuvre, exhibition catalogue, S.M.A.K. Ghent; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2019, p. 199. The Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser, born in 1930, developed a pictorial language that is as idiosyncratic as it is poetic, combining different stylistic approaches and exploring the material and process-related conditions of painting. His early paintings from the 1960s were created while he was a member of the Nieuwe Visie (New Vision) group, whose objective was to translate impressions of everyday surroundings into simplified flat forms and lines. In contrast to Pop Art, De Keyser did not problematise the new consumer culture but deliberately chose the simple, inconspicuous things of the Flemish village. In his clear compositions and abstract settings, he also consciously refers to Abstract Expressionism, colour field painting and Minimalism. The work The Unanswered Question owes its tension to the dualism of the non-representational and the figurative, one of the great recurring themes in De Keyser's oeuvre. The two monochrome surfaces explore the potential of colour and at the same time evoke the landscape of the Belgian lowlands with its green forests and overcast yet dazzlingly bright sky. The glazed, light green line reinforces the suggestion of the horizon. The painting was created in 1972, at a time when Keyser was increasingly interested in the exploration of pictorial space and the process of painting. By allowing the colliding areas of colour to flow over the edge of the painting, as well as the horizon line, he counteracts the fixed format and the idea of the painting as a window into the landscape and instead emphasises the autonomous object of canvas and paint. Since 1999, his work has been represented by David Zwirner in New York and in London. A solo exhibition on view at the gallery's Hong Kong location in 2021 marked the artist's first solo presentation in Greater China.  In addition to numerous solo museum exhibitions ( 2004 through 2005 to the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Musée de Rochechouart, France, De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Museu de Serralves, Porto and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; 2009, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museu de Serralves, Porto and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, his work was represented at Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, in 1992, and at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Work by the artist is held in permanent collections worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the MoMA, New York, and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent, among others.