Roger Raveel's first own home is located at Petegemstraat 33.

In the early 1940s, he lived here with his mother Bertha, his father Gustaaf and his brother Germain.

During the Second World War, Raveel's neighbour Zulma De Nijs helped out with the housework. She also took care of his mother, who was seriously ill. She died in 1946.

1946 was a key year for the young Raveel: he visited the Vincent van Gogh retrospective at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, which made a deep impression on him. In the same year, through his friend, the painter Antoon De Clerck, he met the then sixteen-year-old Hugo Claus. Claus would later introduce Raveel to literary and artistic circles. Through him, he became acquainted with Cobra artists such as Karel Appel and Corneille. Both Hugo Claus and Karel Appel often visited him here. They stayed in the attic room where Roger's father Gustaaf had set up a simple painting studio for him.

Meanwhile, Roger and Zulma are in a relationship, which Zulma's father is initially not very happy about. He considers artists to be “good-for-nothings”. Nevertheless, Zulma marries Roger in 1948. They move into this house and live there with Roger's father Gustaaf. Zulma runs a small shop where she sells alcoholic beverages. She is also a gifted seamstress and makes or repairs clothes for fellow villagers. This is how she earns a living. It gives Roger the freedom to experiment freely in painting and drawing. In this way, he develops his own visual language.

With her nose for business, Zulma quickly became Roger's “manager”. Although Raveel did not sell anything in those years, she made a clever deal with art collector André Goeminne, who ran the first department stores in the region. He was allowed to choose a painting from time to time in exchange for food and drink. This is how the couple survived the poverty-stricken years after the war.

Anyone who sees this modest terraced house today would find it difficult to imagine the innovative work that was created here. Yet this is where the seeds of Raveel's oeuvre were sown. In 1948, Roger destroyed many of his academic works and started all over again. He decided to depict what he saw by looking closely at reality and capturing the essence of shapes, objects, figures, the landscape and houses.

In this attic room, he painted masterpieces such as Domesticity (1948), Yellow man with cart (1952) and Man with wire in garden (1953). Football field (1952) was also created here: a large painting with powerful colours, composed of many vertical elements. The football field he could see from his attic room served as inspiration. We will pass it later.