RAOUL DE KEYSER:RAOUL DE KEYSER, a Belgian painter whose evocative, seemingly awkward abstractions both celebrated and questioned his medium, has died at 82 in Deinze, near Ghent.
De Keyser became one of the most respected painters of his time, but slowly. For much of his 50-year career he exhibited primarily in Belgium and the Netherlands, achieving international recognition only after his work was included in the 1992 Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany.
De Keyser worked with a striking economy of means. His mature paintings often consist of sparse patches of paint laid over a monochrome field, suggesting scattered islands and eliciting frequent comparisons to Mondrian’s early seascapes. They also evoke the remnants of a larger, more assertive painted shape that has been cut into irregular bits.
Nearly all De Keyser’s work teeters between abstraction and legibility. Indeed, a series of spare, seemingly abstract paintings of white lines and grids on mostly green backgrounds from the early 1970s were based on the chalk lines, goal posts and net of the soccer field near his home.
De Keyser was born in Deinze in 1930, and lived there all his life. His father was a carpenter. He began to paint as a teenager but veered into journalism, writing for daily newspapers.
De Keyser sought artistic training only in his early 30s, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Deinze.
Working directly on canvas with a brush and occasionally chalk using a light touch, he reviewed nearly every mode of abstraction from gestural to geometric, but always avoided extremes.
De Keyser’s wife, Dina Baudoncq, whom he married in 1952, died in 1984. He is survived by their sons, Luc, Piet and Jan; six grandchildren; and his companion, Lia Schelkens.
Raoul de Keyser: born August 29th, 1930; died October 5th, 2012