Nothing, Light and Things

Since its opening in 1999, the Roger Raveel Museum has housed an extensive collection of paintings, drawings and objects by Roger Raveel (1921-2013). Since 2020, annually changing collection presentations offer a broader insight into the rich oeuvre of the artist.

This exhibition is entitled Nothing, Light and Things, referring to a bibliophile edition from 1991 with etchings by Roger Raveel and poems by Roland Jooris, first director of this museum and close friend of the artist. In addition to the publication, this exhibition features a selection of paintings and drawings from different periods.

Raveel never left his native village of Machelen-aan-de-Leie, his habitat that provided him with the inspiration to grow and evolve his pioneering work. We recognize the kitchen where Raveel's wife Zulma does the housework, a cactus on the table and the view of the garden with its typical concrete posts and walls. We see the artist's father doing a chore or taking a rest at the window as well as the cat that keeps him company. The lines of the fields and the farmland alternate with the village scenes: the football field, the bicycle against the garden wall. The painter himself also appears in two striking self-portraits.

“The things in the world” relate to each other in an enigmatic and at the same time uncomplicated structure. Raveel shapes them in his very own language, his recognizable colour palette and clear compositions. He combines bright areas of colour and silhouettes of figures and objects with abstract, expressive paint strokes, mysterious squares and objects from reality that are mounted on the painted surface: a symbiosis of life and art.

Nothing, Light and Things is dedicated to Luc Levrau, co-founder and inspirer of the Roger Raveel Museum, bosom friend and right-hand man of Roger Raveel and Zulma De Nijs.