Raoul de Keyser: Drift

Raoul De Keyser: Drift, published on the occasion of the eponymous show curated by Ulrich Loock at David Zwirner, is organized around a group of 23 paintings that De Keyser (1930–2012) completed shortly before his death, which have become known collectively as The Last Wall. Imposing stark material and formal limitations, De Keyser was able to revisit in this body of work many of the major themes that occupied him throughout his nearly 50-year career: inconspicuous things close at hand, the landscape of the low lands where he lived all his life and the partition of the picture plane. This elegant catalogue presents plates and details of a selection of paintings, beginning in the 1970s, that emphasizes the tentative way De Keyser chose to explore his themes. Drift reveals an uncompromising artist who continued to pose new aesthetic problems for himself—even at the end of his life—and managed to come up with original and deeply moving solutions.