At the age of 16, eager to become a photographer, he attended daytime drawing classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and evening courses at the " Vrije Nijverheids- en Beroepsschool", a school where technicians were trained for the Gevaert factory (now Agfa-Gevaert).

Roger Van de Wouwer's first solo exhibition took place in 1963 in the Library-Gallery of Henri Mercier in Brussels, where several paintings (Galathée, L'incorruptible) created a scandal and led to legal complaints.

He wrote: Roger van de Wouwer a ouvert à toute volée les portes qui protégeaient la routine.

Later, he painted series, bringing together on the canvas elements in which the distance in meaning intensifies the power of the image: the cycles of combustion engines together with Manneken Pis,[3] erected members combined with various crosses, diagrams of modern physics embedded in alchemical symbols, etc.

Together with Gilles Brenta [fr], Van de Wouwer created a series of paintings (Douaniers sans frontières) whose attraction lies in the complementarity of the painters, each completing half-paintings started by the other.