FEATURED ARTIST   -  December 2006

René Magritte (1898-1967)

René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter, born in Lessines. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Magritte worked in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926 when a contract with Galerie la Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time.

L'homme au chapeau melon	Chef d'ouevre mysteres horizon	The son of man,1964

In 1926, Magritte produced his first surrealist painting, and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group. Magritte was already painting in the style, closely akin to surrealism, that was predominant throughout his long career.

Les amants	Le modele rouge

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. At the time he renounced the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, though he returned to the themes later.

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967 and was interred in Schaarbeek Cemetery. His work showed in the United States in New York in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.

La belle saison	La magie noire	L'chateau des Pyrenees

Magritte's biographer writes: “The simplicity in his work is a suspect simplicity. In his writings - which include general articles, a few literary pieces, and special articles on specific themes - and in the titles he gave to his works, Magritte was methodical, as he was in his painting. The unexpected is never mere caprice. Moreover, it resides not so much in Magritte as in ourselves. We are not prepared for, and we do not instantly grasp, his technique of thinking and painting. It is not recalcitrance on his part but a natural need to react to the stereotype phenomena of everyday life in a way contrary to expectation; it is a need to correct. What is more, in Magritte's work this became a discipline of feeling, thinking, and behaving which he discovered and evolved for himself. Accordingly, his method - others feel it was a discipline - is as valid a subject for our inquiry as the works themselves.”

La trahison des images	Golconde, 1953