Winterreis (Winter Journey)

Painted in 1985, Raoul de Keyser’s Winterreis (Winter Journey) is an arctic panorama, a glacial scythe delicately piercing the slate ground. The title of the painting, alludes to the suite of 24 poems Winterreis, by the German lyrical poet Wilhelm Müller, later set to music by Franz Schubert. The distinct planes of Winterreis exemplify de Keyser’s mature style, their sparse geometries suggestive of disparate islands floating within an ice field. In his work, de Keyser navigated the fine line between abstraction and figuration; as the artist himself observed, ‘The things I see come back in one way or another,’ (R. de Keyser quoted in R. Smith, ‘Raoul De Keyser, Intuitive Abstract Painter, Dies at 82,’ New York Times, 16 October 2012). De Keyser studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Deinze, Belgium, where he helped to organise New Vision, a group oriented towards British Pop; still, he was always drawn towards abstraction. His paintings teeter on the precipice of legibility, evoking uncharted topographies, schematic renderings, terrestrial tracings. Similarly, Winterreis transcends definition, instead offering a poetic vision of the world and a portal to new, unimaginable vistas.