There are several reasons to bring together the work of Roger Raveel and Marcel Broodthaers. They belong to the same generation. Both were born in the early 1920s and shared the same historical context. As artists, they each chose an idiosyncratic position within that period.

They aligned themselves neither with the existential seriousness that characterized many of their contemporaries, nor with the artists fascinated by economic expansion and its imagery. Instead, they operated between these extremes, in a space where distance, nuance, and an almost quiet form of resistance are central.

For this presentation, we began with the selection of available works by Broodthaers from the collection of Ronny Van de Velde. The Raveel drawings were not chosen on the basis of formal parallels, but rather from a shared stance—a resonance in artistic attitude. This presentation forms part of a series of exploratory exercises that seek to further question and illuminate Raveel’s oeuvre through different formal and conceptual themes.