René Magritte

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist painter. He is best known for taking ordinary objects and placing them in strange, unexpected settings, which made viewers question what is real and how we represent things. His work later shaped pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

Magritte was born in Lessines, in the Belgian province of Hainaut, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor and textile merchant, and Régina, who worked as a milliner before marrying. He started drawing lessons in 1910. On 24 February 1912, his mother drowned herself in the River Sambre at Châtelet—it was not her first attempt. Her body was found 16 days later, on 12 March. A story claimed that 13-year-old Magritte saw her body being pulled from the water, with her dress covering her face, but later research showed this tale likely came from the family nurse and was untrue. Still, the image of a cloth hiding a face appears in several of his paintings from 1927–28, including *Les Amants*.

His earliest surviving paintings, from around 1915, were Impressionistic. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels under Constant Montald, but found the lessons uninspiring. He also took classes there with painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. Between 1918 and 1924, his work showed the influence of Futurism and the figurative Cubism of Jean Metzinger. From December 1920 to September 1921, he served in the Belgian infantry in Beverlo, near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, he married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. That same year, poet Marcel Lecomte showed him a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico’s *The Song of Love* (1914). Magritte was moved to tears, calling it “one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time.” The work of Belgian symbolist William Degouve de Nuncques, especially *The Blind House* (1892), also influenced him, particularly his *Empire of Lights* series.

From 1922 to 1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, then as a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels let him paint full-time. That year he created his first surreal painting, *The Lost Jockey*. In 1927, he had his first solo exhibition in Brussels, but it received poor reviews. Discouraged, he moved to Paris, where he befriended André Breton and joined the Surrealist group. His version of Surrealism was marked by an illusionistic, dreamlike quality. He became a leading figure in the movement and stayed in Paris for three years. In 1929, he signed a contract with Goemans Gallery in Paris alongside Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy. On 15 December 1929, he contributed to the final issue (No. 12) of *La Révolution surréaliste* with his essay “Les mots et les images,” which explored how words and images interact, echoing his work *The Treachery of Images*.

When Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, Magritte lost his contract income. Having made little impression in Paris, he returned to Brussels in 1930 and went back to advertising work. He and his brother Paul started an agency that provided a steady living. In 1932, he joined the Communist Party, leaving and rejoining several times over the years. Between 1930 and 1932, he had no exhibitions and sold no paintings, surviving on a monthly stipend arranged by Belgian playwright Claude Spaak, husband of Suzanne Spaak. In 1934, Suzanne’s sister, Alice Lorge, bought Magritte’s *La Magie Noire*—the first of 11 paintings depicting his wife Georgette in classical nude poses. Claude Spaak also commissioned portraits of his wife and children from Magritte. In 1936, Magritte had his first U.S. solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exhibition at the London Gallery in 1938. Between 1934 and 1937, he designed film posters under the pseudonym ‘Emair’ for the German sound film distributor Tobis Klangfilm; seven of these posters are preserved in the Leuven City Archive.

Early in his career, British surrealist patron Edward James let Magritte stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James appears in two 1937 paintings: *Le Principe du Plaisir* (The Pleasure Principle) and *La Reproduction Interdite* (also known as *Not to Be Reproduced*). During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, Magritte stayed in Brussels, which caused a break with Breton. From 1943 to 1944, he briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style called his “Renoir period,” a reaction to feeling alienated under occupation. In 1946, rejecting the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto *Surrealism in Full Sunlight*. During 1947–48, his “Vache period,” he painted in a provocative, crude Fauve style. To support himself, he produced fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos, and later forged banknotes in the lean postwar years. (Ironically, Belgium issued a 500-franc banknote honoring Magritte on his centenary.) He undertook this forgery work alongside his brother Paul.