Around 1955, Raveel felt that his art was in danger of becoming too systematic. He wants to come back into unforced direct contact with the natural, the organic, the vegetative, the animal. His work in this period becomes more abstract, looser, more direct. These are paintings in which one often barely recognises the realistic starting point. The subject dictates the manner of painting: Bull has a raw, rough paint skin. It is not the image, but the plastic language that interests Raveel at that moment. The bull must be present in the paint treatment, in the linework, in the colourite.