René Magritte – the magician of Surrealism

René François Ghislain Magritte – an artist whose paintings inspire dreams. The motifs of his paintings are therefore often interpreted as representations of fantasies. However, his works do not originate from a dream world; on the contrary, Magritte's entire artistic output was dedicated to the goal of vividly depicting reality .

The Belgian is not an eccentric self-promoter like the Parisian Surrealists , but a matter-of-fact engineer of the impossible with only one intention: to shatter the boundary between fantasy and reality.

He is the surrealist outsider who consciously rejects the usual surrealist techniques and approaches. His brushstrokes are minimalist and free of emotional traces or personal dramas. His paintings resemble didactic charts that could serve as teaching material for higher education institutions.

The artist himself describes his painting style as banal and emphasizes that he is not an artist, but a thinking person who expresses his thoughts through painting.

Magritte's artworks are nevertheless characterized by a distinctive visual language that transports the viewer into a world full of riddles and mysteries. In this biographical article, you will learn more about the life and works of René Magritte and simultaneously immerse yourself in the fascinating world of Surrealism.

Significant milestones in Magritte's life

• 1898: Magritte was born in Lessines (Belgium)
• 1912: His mother was found drowned in the Sambre River
• 1915: First painting
• 1916-18: He attends the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels
• 1921-22: military service
• 1922: Wedding with Georgette Berger
• 1926: beginning of his career as a full-time artist
• 1929: He paints Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe (The Betrayal of Pictures)
• 1944: After World War II, he resumed his career as a surrealist artist
• 1964: He paints his legendary work Le fils de l'homme (The Son of Man)
• 1967: Magritte dies of pancreatic cancer

childhood

René François Ghislain Magritte was born on November 21st in Lessines, a town in the Walloon province of Hainaut in Belgium . His father, Léopold Magritte, was a tailor and merchant, while his mother, Régina Bertinchamps, worked as a milliner before her marriage.

Shortly before René's birth, the couple moved to Lessines, where Régina's widowed mother also lived in the same household. René had two younger brothers named Raymond (born 1900) and Paul (born 1902).

In the spring of 1904, the family moved to Châtelet, a town in the province of Hainaut in the Walloon region of Belgium. René began painting and drawing at the age of twelve (1910). He attended an art class once a week. Three works from that year have been found so far.

Thanks to his father's business success in the cooking oil trade, the family was able to move into a larger house in 1911, built according to their own plans. René's father saw him as a child prodigy and hung his works in the hallway of the house for every visitor to admire.

Early trauma – mother's suicide

The Belgian painter didn't immediately discover the world of the unreal, the art movement that became known as Surrealism . Yet René, who was already gifted at drawing as a child, certainly had reason to escape into dream worlds at an early age.

When he was 14, his mother drowned herself for reasons that were never revealed. The young Magritte witnessed his mother, dressed only in a white nightgown, being pulled from the water 17 days later. Her body lay in state in the house for a day.

It is possible that the many depictions of women with a white cloth over their heads were inspired by this traumatic experience. The young Magritte remained silent about the loss of his mother, speaking of it only once, to his close friend Louis Scutenaire.

At that moment, however, he felt an “immense pride” at being the “pitiful center of a drama.” From 1925 onward, these experiences appeared in several of his works, including “The Daydreams of a Solitary Walker .

As a result of this event, the father fled with his three sons from the romantic, nature-surrounded town of Châtelet to the nearby industrial city of Charleroi.

Life was harder here; the already traumatized René lost himself during his time at the Gymnasium in the literary magic worlds that Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Maurice Leblanc (The Master Thief Arsène Lupin), Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera) and the Fantômas novels (Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain) had to offer.

Study period at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels

At 15, Magritte rediscovered representational art and femininity for himself; Georgette Berger was the model for his first, still impressionistic, works. After graduating from high school, he decided to study art , which he pursued from 1916 at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. During his studies, his work already showed a distinctly futuristic feel, and Cubist influences can also be discerned.

At the beginning of his artistic career, Magritte was inspired by the works of the Hague School, particularly by the painters Jacob Maris and Pierre Paulus. Although he could only occasionally afford to study at the Academy, he later recalled that he learned drawing, perspective, and anatomy there from Emile Vandamme-Sylva. His oil paintings from 1917 reflect the Post-Impressionist influences of Pierre Bonnard.

In 1919, Magritte finished his art studies , married Georgette Berger, and was initially forced to earn a living for the young family by drawing wallpaper patterns in a factory, as a poster painter, and as an advertising illustrator.

In 1919, the art center “Le Centre d'Art” founded by Victor Bourgeois and Aimé Declercq

It is claimed that Pierre Bourgeois introduced Futurism

Early work and first successes as an artist

ELT Mesens crossed at a group exhibition. Mesens, who Dadaism avant-garde by Erik Satie .

He introduced Magritte to the Dadaist movement and persuaded his father to hire him as a piano teacher for his brother Paul. Mesens eventually hired Magritte in 1925 as a contributor to the magazine “Œsophage” and a year later for the critical surrealist art magazine “Marie” .

In October 1920, René Magritte attended the Congress of Modern Art in Antwerp, organized by Jozef Peeters and Huib Hoste. During his visit to the Royal Museum, he came across a triptych by the verist painter Eugène Laermans modernism , at least theoretically .

At the end of the year, Magritte was able to present his works for the first time at an international exhibition in Geneva, including his work “Women and Flowers”.

Wallpapers, patterns and advertising graphics

In early 1922, René Magritte, who was already engaged at the time, began working as a pattern designer in a wallpaper factory in Haren. The factory, described by Peters Lacroix as one of Belgium's leading companies, likely employed Magritte for two years. In June 1922, he married Georgette Berger in St. Mary's Church in Schaerbeek.

Unfortunately, Magritte suffered a miscarriage early in his pregnancy, which led him to decide against having children to protect his wife's health. During this time, Magritte painted several nudes influenced by Fernand Léger. These complex compositions were characterized by strong, flowing rhythms.

In 1923, Magritte, together with Victor Servranckx, planned the publication of “L'Art pur: Défense de l'estétique” with the publishing house Editions Ça ira in Antwerp. He also participated in the publisher's international exhibition, which featured artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Lyonel Feininger, and László Moholy-Nagy.

In January 1923, Magritte also exhibited at the Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels, alongside Flouquet, Servranckx, Peeters, and Paul Delvaux. That year he painted his most abstract works and began working as a poster and advertising designer. He finally sold his first painting, a portrait of the singer Evelyne Brélia.

Magritte and Surrealism

In 1923, buoyed by his first sales success, Magritte decided to henceforth “paint objects only with their most striking details .” Although the sale of a portrait of a famous singer had given him renewed artistic confidence, several more years passed before he was able to secure an agreement with the Brussels gallery “Le Centaure” , which from then on guaranteed his daily livelihood.

Magritte could finally concentrate solely on his art, which with the work “The Lost Jockey” began to take on its first surrealist features.

In the summer or autumn of 1923, René Magritte definitively embraced Surrealism, having experienced a revelation through the discovery of Giorgio de Chirico's work "Love Song" (1914). Although the exact date is unknown, the influence of the Greek-Italian painter is not discernible in Magritte's work until 1925. Besides de Chirico, George Grosz and Carlo Carrà were also important sources of inspiration for the Belgian artist.

In the spring of 1924, René Magritte gave up his job as a wallpaper designer and became a commercial artist, working primarily for haute couture and sheet music until 1929. During 1924 and 1925, Magritte painted only about 15 pictures and earned very little money.

With “The White Man ,” a portrait of Marcel Lecomte created in the spring of 1925, Magritte abandoned the stylization and simplification of his early works. He drew inspiration from André Derain’s “Le chevalier X” (1914, first version) and also engaged with the work of Max Ernst in “The Window” (spring/summer 1925).

In November 1925, the first group exhibition, “La Peinture surréaliste [Surrealist Painting],” place at the Galerie Pierre in Paris, where Magritte presented his first surrealist paintings. He decided to paint objects only with their most striking details. That same month, he also created the set designs for two one-act plays: “Faith” by Herwarth Walden and “Rien qu'un homme” by Paul Deauville—his only foray into the world of theater.

René Magritte signed an exclusive contract with Paul-Gustave Van Hecke , a Belgian journalist, author, and art lover. Between January 1926 and September 1927, Magritte created nearly 100 paintings. In October 1926, Walter Schwarzenberg the gallery “Le Centaure” in Brussels and acquired half of Van Hecke’s contract with Magritte.

Thanks to Schwarzenberg's support, Magritte experienced one of the most productive periods of his career. Under these circumstances, recognition soon followed; in 1927, "Le Centaure" held its first exhibition dedicated solely to his paintings.

Magritte and the Parisian Surrealists around André Breton

Magritte now moved to Paris , the center of Surrealist art. He was enthusiastic about the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who had also inspired other important Surrealists, and he also met Surrealists such as André Breton and Paul Éluard personally.

The Parisian Surrealists, who had gathered around the writer André Breton in the French capital, were not exactly thrilled with the Belgian. When he appeared in their circle in September 1927 to meet like-minded individuals, the subversive artist, dressed in bourgeois clothing, was received with skepticism by the revolutionaries.

Although Magritte's calculated pictorial worlds fulfill the surrealist principle of uniting different realities in one work of art, they do not really fit the random technique of "automatism ," which is supposed to reveal the unconscious and is favored by most of the artists in the group (Magritte would later describe it as "very ineffective").

In Breton's series of articles, "Surrealism and Painting," the Belgian artist is not mentioned at all. In December 1929, a scandal erupted when Magritte's Catholic wife, Georgette, appeared at a party at the writer's home wearing a gold cross around her neck. Breton demanded that she "this object ." Magritte and Georgette subsequently left the party—and six months later, they left the city.

Only years later, when the revolutionary fury of the Surrealists had subsided somewhat and “automatism” was no longer their preferred way of finding images, did Magritte reconcile with the art Jacobins and show his works in group exhibitions in London, Paris and New York, as reported GEO EPOCHE: “René Magritte – Master of Deception”

Return to Brussels

He was not the first artist to have a bitter falling out with André Breton, and as a result, he returned to Brussels in 1930. During this time, his circle of artist friends grew. Magritte is known, for example, to have had close contact with Hans Arp, Joan Miró , and Salvador Dalí .

After returning to Brussels, Magritte settled into a ground-floor apartment that would be his home for the next 24 years. The apartment was filled with antiques from department stores and had a dining room where he painted, as well as a small garden where he grew celery and onions.

Magritte subsequently became one of the leading figures of Surrealism, exhibiting several works at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (Galerie Beaux-Arts, Paris) in 1938. Alongside this, he pursued other artistic directions, making short films, joining and leaving the Belgian Communist Party, giving lectures on his work, and contributing to several publications from 1930 onwards.

Although Magritte gradually achieved success – with his first solo exhibition in New York in 1936, followed by exhibitions in Paris, Rome and major retrospectives in Brussels and New York – he remained loyal to his Belgian homeland and hardly traveled.

His works were bought by American art stars such as Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg , and Roy Lichtenstein , and his ideas were adopted by numerous advertising graphic designers. Furthermore, his puzzle games were sold as posters in department stores worldwide.

Magical Realism – The distinctive style of Magritte

Within the Surrealist circle, Magritte increasingly occupied a special position because he had developed a completely unique approach and style, his “magical realism” . He painted everyday objects, always sticking to the same subjects; Magritte admirers are familiar with the pipe and the apple, the curtain and the bowler hat, the dove and the blue sky, the handcuffs and the lions, the eggs and the hot air balloons, and the people with cloths over their heads.

These details are not chosen at random, but mostly relate to profound childhood experiences. They are depicted naturalistically down to the smallest detail, but distorted and reassembled in such an unreal way that, for every attentive viewer, Surrealism fulfills the task Magritte intended for it: traditional thought patterns and viewing habits are thoroughly shaken up, the horizon of experience is transcended, and reality reveals its unreal side.

Despite his critical distance from the church and the profane objects he uses in his works, Magritte seems to be overtaken by the return of the repressed, as postulated Sigmund Freud

The deliberate lack of expression in his painting and daily life can, however, be interpreted as humility serving a higher purpose – the mystery hidden behind things. Magritte calls it the “mystery” .

The “mystery” is Magritte’s holy grail: an intangible fascination that, in his usage, can mean anything from the poetry of an object to the shock of recognition or the invisible kinship of things. Magritte’s “mystery” is not to be found in the afterlife or in transcendence, but in the profane objects of everyday life.

“Because everything in our lives,” says Magritte, “is a mystery.”

Like a monk who prays the rosary daily, Magritte approaches this mystery through constant practice and repetition.

The Renoir Period and the Flirtation with Impressionism

During the Second World War, this style was interrupted by a brief flirtation with Impressionism , which was also said to be due to the justified fear of raids and attacks by the National Socialists, who classified his paintings as “degenerate art” .

The result was cheerful paintings in the style of the famous Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir . Magritte commented on the invasion of Belgium by the German Wehrmacht as follows:

The German occupation marked a turning point in my art. Before the war, my paintings expressed fear; the experience of war taught me that art is about expressing enchantment. I live in an unpleasant world, and my work is intended as a counterattack

Période Vache – The cow period

This counterattack took shape after the “période renoir” in the “période vache” and became even more willful; the paintings of this “cow period” were very colorful and also quite crude.

Perhaps too crude for Magritte, who soon returned to his surrealist style. The paintings of his later period were impressively mysterious, dynamic, and sensual , displaying many new, sophisticated shades of blue and a refined painting technique.

The paintings of the “Cow Period” were characterized by vibrant colors and closed outlines, representing a clear break from his previous work. The dispute with the well-known Surrealists Paul Éluard and André Breton led to this radical change in Magritte's art.

The rejection of his earlier works prompted him to break new ground and develop a completely new artistic concept. These "wild" paintings incorporate elements such as humor , irony , caricatured figures , and explicit depictions of sexuality .

René Magritte's "Cow Period" can be seen as a turning point in his artistic career – a phase full of innovation, provocation and rebellion against the established art world.

However, this liberation also led Magritte back to his refined and naturalistic painting style of the 1920s and 1930s. While his new paintings were provocative, they also reflected his return to a more classical form of realism .

Rebellion against Parisian Surrealism and the Empire of Lights

The 1947 Surrealist exhibition in Paris marked a kind of revival for this art movement in Europe. However, Magritte's works were unfortunately relegated to the retrospective section – a circumstance that deeply irritated him.

Frustration and disappointment were the driving forces behind Magritte's decision to exhibit his work in a different gallery. He quickly created a series of provocative paintings with which he intended to shock Parisian Surrealism.

He was supported in this endeavor by the poet Louis Soutenaire , who also provided the titles for many of these paintings. The collaboration between Magritte and Soutenaire resulted in a remarkable synergy between word and image. Magritte drew inspiration for his art from various influences – including comic book artists and Fauvist such as Henri Matisse .

In 1947, René Magritte also began what is perhaps one of the most famous series in his oeuvre, which replaced his previous pastel-colored and light works. This series comprised a total of 17 oil paintings and 10 gouaches entitled “The Kingdom of Lights” .

In these artworks, Magritte masterfully combines a nighttime streetscape with a burning lantern and a brilliantly bright, cloudy sky. The paintings in this series possess a lyrical, nostalgic, and above all, tranquil quality. They remind the viewer of bygone eras while simultaneously conveying a sense of peace and harmony.

With their subtle visual humor, they also directly connect to Magritte's earlier pre-war works. In a lecture in London, Magritte revealed the surrealist technique behind these impressive paintings. He quoted a line from André Breton's poem "L'Aigrette" :

"If only the sun would shine tonight.".

Years later, he literally translated this line into his paintings, which still amazes people today. Magritte's ability to use surreal elements to create poetic worlds was remarkable. By combining different fragments of reality, he not only succeeded in creating unusual visual constellations but also in evoking deep emotional responses in the viewer.

The series “The Realm of Lights” is an outstanding example of Magritte’s mastery of surrealist art and his ability to expand the boundaries of the imaginable. The paintings in this series exude a special atmosphere – they appear both familiar and mysterious.

They invite the viewer to immerse themselves in their world and be captivated by their poetry and magic.

Magritte's late work

From 1953 onwards, he created his last major works, murals consisting of eight pictures for a casino.

For the remaining almost fifteen years until his unexpected death on August 15, 1967, Magritte exhibited frequently, such as at documenta II , and won prizes, such as the Guggenheim Prize for Belgium in 1956, but took a more relaxed approach to his own production.

Imaginative people among us still enjoy being inspired to think by his pictures; and Magritte's work has had an important influence on quite a few artists, e.g. on the artists of Pop Art and many conceptual artists .

The following 5-minute video shows some of his most famous works: