"Every day I make more progress in technique: understanding of color, the material and the line. [I] can even give better theoretical explanations. And moreover, gradually I live more and more connected with the matter of the profession. What I mean is that my thinking and feeling are more directly, more fundamentally connected with painting itself. No longer so much thinking and feeling get lost."
Roger Henri Kamiel, Knight Raveel was a Belgian painter, whose work is often associated with pop art because of its depiction of everyday objects. Raveel's style evolved throughout his career, from abstract to figurative.
"Hugo, [Claus] Now you should see my recent works. A drawing in ink, three pencil drawings and two sketches in oil-paint: a still-life and a landscape in the strongest colors you can imagine. I still have to work on the landscape, but I really think it will be the best of my paintings till now.. ..but the happiest thing is, I have acquired much more freedom."
"[I have] all respect for that neoclassicism [of Piet Mondrian ], but it would sacrifices me too much to architecture. That kind of art does indeed fit perfectly in very modern rooms of modern buildings in equally modern cities, but never again a handcart can drive in there and never again someone can speak or think of a white dog cart in the fog. I am longing for a painting that can hang in a modern environment and still have its personal life."
"Around 1950 Raveel started to question the usual role of the spectator by actively involving him in the final realization of his paintings. He realized this by keeping empty certain parts in the painting – creating only abstract color surfaces or by cutting off some corners. This he did literally or by means of a painted diagonal. So the spectator himself have to fill in the missing elements. Due to this new way of observing and displaying Raveel got a separate - somewhat isolated - [artistic] position, both in the artist-scene of Ghent and beyond."
"The city offers certainly advantages, I agree. But I think that they do not outweigh the direct, unadulterated inspiration of the natural life that I find here [in the country, in Machelen]."
"I dont want to be a preacher who tries to improve the world according to his own opinion. For that I put too much in perspective in my thinking and perhaps I am more independent. I do not start from a reflex on tradition and on social and political structures but rather from a continual and fresh scanning for the essence of things."
"An important constant in Raveels art is the integration of opposites: figuration - abstraction; art - life; everyday-life - the metaphysical. The square plays a key function in Raveels integrations."