Raoul De Keyser was a painter in the true sense of the word. His oeuvre is the result of a consistent and idiosyncratic study of the medium of painting and the phenomenon we call ‘painting’. His sober compositions, his interest in monochrome painting and his analytical attitude vis-à-vis painting’s fundamentals (texture, execution of line, support, materials, format), bring his work close to minimal and fundamental painting. Nevertheless, his painting cannot be termed purely conceptual: De Keyser always tempers the strictness of his programmatic approach with intuition and feeling. Moreover, De Keyser usually based his abstract works on concrete everyday images, so there is always a bit of reality shining through.