| René Magritte (1898-1967),
Belgian painter, one of the major surrealists. Magritte was born in Lessines, a
small town in Belgium. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in
Brussels, the capital of Belgium where he later settled
permanently. Magritte was interested in the modern European movements of
cubism and futurism before he discovered the paintings
of Giorgio de Chirico in 1923. The unusual combination of objects
in de Chirico’s works influenced Magritte’s choice of subject matter.
In 1926 Magritte met André Breton, founder of
the surrealism movement, and he became involved with the surrealist
painters in Paris, where he worked from 1927 to 1930. By the time of his first
one-man exhibition in Brussels in 1927, Magritte had begun to paint in the
style, closely akin to surrealism, that remained dominant throughout his long
career.
A meticulous, skillful technician, Magritte is noted for
works that juxtapose ordinary objects in unusual contexts. Everyday objects are
reproduced in exact detail but placed in incongruous settings and combinations:
A huge bright-green apple pushes out at the walls of a room; men fall like
raindrops over rooftops; a giant heavy boulder floats across a clouded blue sky.
Magritte’s work conveys a sense of mystery, uneasiness, and even fear by
presenting an environment totally unlike that of everyday experience.
Early in his career Magritte introduced words into his
paintings, contrasting the varying degrees of reality in the name of an object,
the image of the object, and the object itself. Among his best-known works in
this vein is La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images,
1928-1929, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Below the painted image of a
smoker’s pipe appears the written declaration, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This
is not a pipe). Magritte displayed a mordant wit in creating surrealist versions
of famous paintings, such as Madame Récamier de David (1949, private
collection). In this painting an elaborate coffin is substituted for the
reclining woman in the famous portrait by Jacques-Louis David.
Magritte’s work was first shown in the United States in
New York City in 1936. The first major retrospective exhibition of his work was
presented by the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Dallas, Texas, in 1960. The
Museum of Modern Art in New York City organized an important
retrospective of Magritte’s paintings in 1965 that traveled to several cities in
the United States in 1966. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a
Magritte retrospective in 1992. Magritte’s works were shown in major European
exhibitions in Rotterdam in 1967, in Paris in 1979, in Brussels in 1998, and in
Rome in 2001. |
