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Rene Magritte Biography
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The Belgian artist René François Ghislain Magritte, more commonly known as René Magritte, was a surrealist artist that was born on 21 November 1898 and died on 15 August 1967.
His work often showed depictions of everyday objects in an unusual way. He created numerous thought-provoking and witty images that he became known for.
He was an influence on the minimalist, pop and conceptual art scenes. His most notable works include the paintings On the Threshold of Liberty, The Treachery of Images, The Human Condition, The Son of Man, Elective Affinities, Golconda, The Portrait and The Menaced Assassin.
René Magritte was the oldest son of the textile merchant and tailor Léopold Magritte. He was born in the town Lessines in the Hainaut province in Belgium. His mother was Régina Magritte who worked as a milliner prior to her marriage to René Magritte’s farther.
RenГ© started to learn to draw in 1910 when he began taking lessons. Two years later, his mother committed suicide by drowning in the River Sambre. She had previously attempted to take her own life, which led her husband to lock her up in her bedroom to try and prevent her attempts.
The tragic event that led to her death happened after she escaped her captivity. She was missing for days before her body was found washed up down the river.
At first it was thought that René, who was only 13 at the time, was present when his mother’s body was retrieved from the river but more recent research has showed this to not be true. The story was believed to originate from one of the family nurses.
It is believed that when his mother’s body was first found, her dress was covering her face and it has been suggested that this is the reason behind several of René’s paintings showing cloth covering the faces of people in his paintings.
René Magritte’s Career
The earliest paintings that René Magritte painted were in an impressionistic style, dating back to around 1915. He continued on his exploration of painting by enrolling into the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts school located in Brussels where he studied under Constant Montald. However, he did not find the studies to be inspiring. He went on to produce paintings after leaving the school between 1918 and 1924 but they were instead influenced by the Futurism style as well as figurative Cubism – influenced by Metzinger.
Magritte became a part of the Belgian infantry from December 1920 to September 1921, posted in a Flemish town known as Beverlo, located near Leopoldsburg. Magritte married Georgette Berger in 1922, a person who he had met as a child. He worked at a wallpaper factory from 1922 to 1923 as a draughtsman. Magritte then became an advertisement and poster designer until 1926 when he got the opportunity to work as a full-time painter due to his contact with an art gallery in Brussels. This led to his first surreal painting known as “The Lost Jockey” or “Le Jockey Perdu”. His first art exhibition was held in Brussels in 1927. However, it had a very poor reception from critics leading to him becoming depressed by his apparent failure. He decided to move to Paris where he came in contact with André Breton and became friends. Magritte got involved with a surrealist group as a result of his contact with Breton. He became the leading member of the group and grew his dream-like, illusionistic characteristic that was his version of Surrealism. He stayed in Paris for three years.
After the gallery in Brussels closed in 1929, Magritte income he received from the contract ended and due to having very little effect on the movement in Paris, he moved back to Brussels in 1930. He found work again in advertising, forming an agency with his brother, Paul, earning himself a living wage.
Edward James, another surrealist patron of the time, allowed Magritte to stay rent-free at his London home giving Magritte the chance to continue work on his paintings. James was later featured in two of Magritte’s paintings. They were The Pleasure Principle (Le Principe du Plaisir) and Not to be Reproduced (La Reproduction Interdite).
During World War II, the German Occupation of Brussels led to a change in his work. He adopted a painterly, colourful style – also known as Magritte’s Renoir Period. It came about as a reaction to the feelings he had during the German Occupation and the abandonment and alienation he felt living there at the time. He later renounced the work in 1946 citing it as violent and pessimistic. Magritte then joined a number of other artists from Belgian in the signing of the Surrealism in Full Sunlight manifesto. Magritte began to paint in a crude Fauve and provocative style from 1947 to 1948, known as his Vache Period. Due to the lean post-war period, he began to create fraudulent Picassos, Chiricos and Braques along with forging banknotes. He did this with his brother Paul and Marcel Mariën, who sold the forgeries. By the end of 1948, he was able to return to the style of his previous work before the war began – surrealist art. It was the style that he preferred.
Magritte had his exhibited in New York (1936) and another two times in the same city in two separate exhibitions – Museum of Modern Art (1965) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1992).
Magritte had close ties politically to the Communist Party even after the war. He was also an agnostic along with his politically left alignment.
His work only really started picking up in popularity in the 1960s. Magritte had a great influence on minimalist, conceptual and pop art. In 2005, he was ranked 18th in the Flemish version of “The Greatest Belgian” and 9th in the Walloon version.
René Magritte’s Personal Life
Magritte’s wife, Georgette Berger, was a butcher’s daughter (in Charleroi). In 1920, he met her again for the first time after last seeing her when he was 13. She then became Magritte’s muse and model for many of his paintings. He started an affair with a young painter, Sheila Legg, in 1936. Magritte decided to have Paul Colinet, a friend, distract his wife so that he could have his affair but this led to Georgette having an affair with Paul. Magritte and his wife only reconciled in 1940.
He died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 68 on 15 August 1967. He was buried in Schaerbeek Cemetery in Evere, Brussels.
Artistic and Philosophical Gestures
Magritte is well known for taking objects that everyone knows in their daily life and brining new meaning to it. This can be seen the most in his painting “The Treachery of Images” where a pipe is a depicted as a model for a tobacco store. He added the words “this is not a pipe” underneath the image which may seem contradictory but it is true since it is just an image of pipe. When Magritte was asked about the image and the words written underneath, he responded by saying that it is not a pipe since it cannot be filled with tobacco.
Magritte did the same in his other works such as a painting of an apple where he used a framing device that made it so that it was not an apple. He pointed out in these types of paintings that even if we depict the object naturally, we cannot catch the item itself.
Magritte created many altered versions of popular paintings in his surrealist style. His work with surrealism is closer to representationalism than the automatic style of other artists such as the well-known Joan MirГі. His desire to make poetic imagery is seen through his use of putting every-day objects in unfamiliar spaces. Magritte described a painting as putting colours next to each other in a way that familiar objects such as trees, furniture, the sky or graffiti unites to form a single poetic image. The poetic symbolism that the image as a whole creates dispenses the need for individual symbolic significance.
He describes his paintings as merely visible images that do not hide anything. When someone sees his paintings they often ask “what does it mean?”, but according to Magritte, they do not mean anything because all mysteries mean nothing as they are unknowable.
Artists That Have Been Influenced By Magritte
Many contemporary artists have been greatly influenced by Magritte’s work showing how fickle images can be. Some of the artists that have been heavily influenced by Magritte work are Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Duane Michals, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Storm Thorgerson and Jan Verdoodt. Some of the work that has been influenced has direct references while others have contemporary viewpoints of Magritte abstract fixations.
Pop artists have been compared to Magritte’s use of simple graphic styles of ordinary images. It is widely accepted that Magritte had a great influence on Pop art and the development of it even though Magritte said that he did not think there was connection.
René Magritte’s Museum
On 30 May 2009, the Magritte Museum opened its doors to the public in Brussels. The museum houses 200 of RenГ© Magritte original paintings, sculptures and drawings in a neo-classical five-level Hotel Altenloh, located on the Place Royale. The collection includes The Empire of Light, The Return and Scheherazade. It is the largest collection of his work in the world and most of it came directly from his widow, Georgette Magritte, and the primary collector of his work, Irene Hamoir Scutenaire. The collection also includes his short surrealist film that he created in 1956 as well as his work in photography dating from 1920.
Magritte’s former home is another museum that shows where the artists lived from 1930 to 1954, located at 135 Rue Esseghem, Brussels. On 24 September 2009, two men armed with guns entered the museum and stole the nude depiction of Magritte’s wife that he painted, known as Olympia. The painting’s estimated worth is 1.1 million USD. The painting was later returned to the museum on January 2012. The thieves said that they returned it because they were unable to sell it on the black market due to the paintings recognition and fame.
Rene Magritte
Rene Magritte Biography
Rene Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Leopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant, and Regina (nee Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte’s early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Leopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several oil paintings Magritte painted in 1927-1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
Magritte’s earliest oil paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. From 1916 to 1918 he studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. The oil paintings he produced during the years 1918-1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the offshoot of Cubism practiced by Metzinger. Most of his works of this period are female nudes.
In 1922 Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922-1923, he worked as a draughtsman 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. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal oil painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), 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 Andre Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group.
Galerie la Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte’s contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage.
Surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte, in the early stages of his career, to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte’s pieces, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, an oil painting also known as Not to be Reproduced.
Magritte wished to cultivate an approach that avoided the stylistic distractions of most modern painting. While some French Surrealists experimented with new techniques, Magritte settled on a deadpan, illustrative technique that clearly articulated the content of his pictures. Repetition was an important strategy for Magritte, informing not only his handling of motifs within individual pictures, but also encouraging him to produce multiple copies of some of his greatest works. His interest in the idea may have come in part from Freudian psychoanalysis, for which repetition is a sign of trauma. But his work in commercial art may have also played a role in prompting him to question the conventional modernist belief in the unique, original work of art. His work was exhibited 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.
Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels.
Popular interest in Magritte’s work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art. In 2005 he came 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.
Rene Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte
Rene Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte
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A Belgian surrealist painter, Rene Magritte’s witty and thought-provoking paintings sought to have viewers question their perceptions of reality, and become hypersensitive to the world around them. Magritte’s mother was a suicidal woman, which led her husband, Magritte’s father, to lock her up in her room. One day, she escaped, and was found down a nearby river dead, having drowned herself. According to legend, 13 year old Magritte was there when they retrieved the body from the river. As she was pulled from the water, her dress covered her face. This later became a theme in many of Magritte’s paintings in the 1920’s, portraying people with cloth covering their faces.
He began drawing lessons at age ten, and in 1916, went to study a the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he found the instruction uninspiring and unsuited to his tastes. He did not begin his actual painting career until after serving in the Belgian infantry for a short time, and working at a wallpaper company as a draftsman and producing advertising posters. He was able to paint full time due to a short-lived contract with Galerie le Centaure, allowing him to present in his first exhibition, which was poorly received.
Magritte made his living producing advertising posters in a business he ran with his brother, as well as creating forgeries of Picasso, Braque and Chirico paintings. His experience with forgeries also allowed him to create false bank notes during the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, helping him to survive the lean economic times.
Through creating common images and placing them in extreme contexts, Magritte sough to have his viewers question the ability of art to truly represent an object. In his paintings, he often played with the perception of an image and the fact that the painting of the image could never actually be the object. His artistic interpretations influenced many modern artists, including Andy Warhol, Jan Verdoodt and Jasper Johns. His art, which was especially popular during the 1960’s, has also influenced numerous songs, movies, and books.
René François Ghislain Magritte (French: [ʁəne fʁɑ̃swa ɡilɛ̃ maɡʁit]; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.
René Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, Belgium, in 1898. He was the oldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor and textile merchant, and Régina (née Bertinchamps), who was a milliner before she got married. Little is known about Magritte’s early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt at taking her own life; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. Her body was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river.
According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte’s paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
Magritte’s earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. The paintings he produced during the years 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922–23, he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie ‘Le Centaure’ in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), 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. The illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte’s version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years.
Galerie ‘Le Centaure’ closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte’s contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932 he joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years.
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René Magritte
Who Was René Magritte?
René Magritte was a Belgian-born artist who was known for his work with surrealism as well as his thought-provoking images. After attending art school in Brussels, he worked in commercial advertising to support himself while he experimented with his painting. In the 1920s, he began to paint in the surrealist style and became known for his witty images and his use of simple graphics and everyday objects, giving new meanings to familiar things. With a popularity that increased over time, Magritte was able to pursue his art full-time and was celebrated in several international exhibitions. He experimented with numerous styles and forms during his life and was a primary influence on the pop art movement.
Early Life
René François Ghislain Magritte was born in Lessines, Belgium, on November 21, 1898, the oldest of three boys. His father’s manufacturing business at times allowed the family to live in relative comfort, but financial difficulties were a constant threat and forced them to move about the country with some regularity. Magritte’s young world was dealt a far more destructive blow in 1912, when his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in a river.
Magritte found solace from the tragedy in films and novels and especially through painting. His earliest surviving works from this era were accomplished in the impressionist style. However, in 1916, he left home for Brussels, where for the next two years he studied at Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Although he was ultimately unimpressed with the institution, he was nonetheless exposed to emerging styles such as cubism and futurism, which significantly altered the direction of his work. Indeed, many of Magritte’s paintings from the early 1920s owe a clear debt to Pablo Picasso.
Origins of Magritte’s Art Career
In 1921, Magritte began his one year of compulsory military service before returning home and marrying Georgette Berger, whom he had known since he was a boy and with whom he would stay for the rest of his life. After a brief stint in a wallpaper factory, he found work as a freelance poster and advertisement designer while he continued to paint. Around this time, Magritte saw the painting The Song of Love by Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico and was so struck by its imagery that it sent his own work off in the new direction for which he would become known.
Placing familiar, mundane objects such as bowler hats, pipes and rocks in unusual contexts and juxtapositions, Magritte evoked themes of mystery and madness to challenge the assumptions of human perception. With early works such as The Lost Jockey and The Menaced Assassin, Magritte quickly became one of the most important artists in Belgium and found himself at the center of its nascent surrealist movement. But when his first one-man show—in 1927 at the Galerie le Centaure—was poorly received, a disheartened Magritte left his homeland for France.
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Settling in the Perreux-sur-Marne suburb of Paris, Magritte quickly fell in with some of surrealism’s brightest lights and founding fathers, including writer André Breton, poet Paul Éluard and artists Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and Joan Miró. Over the next few years, he produced important works such as The Lovers and The False Mirror and also began to experiment with the use of text, as seen in his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images.
But despite the progress Magritte was making in his art, he had yet to find significant financial success, and in 1930, he and Georgette returned to Brussels, where he set up an ad agency with his younger brother Paul. Though the demands of their studio left Magritte little time for his own work over the next few years, interest in his paintings began to grow and soon he was selling enough to leave his commercial work behind.
Surrealism in Full Sunlight
In the late 1930s, Magritte’s newfound popularity resulted in exhibitions of his work in New York City and London. However, the onset of World War II would soon alter the course of his life and art. His decision to remain in Belgium following the Nazi occupation caused a split between him and André Breton, and the suffering and violence caused by the war led him away from the often dark and chaotic moods of surrealism. “Against widespread pessimism,” he said, “I now propose a search for joy and pleasure.” Works from this period, such as The Return of the Flame and The Clearing, demonstrate this shift, with their brighter palettes and more impressionistic technique.
After the war, Magritte finalized his break with Breton’s branch of surrealism when he and several other artists signed a manifesto titled “Surrealism in Full Sunlight.” A period of experimentation during which Magritte’s created garish and provocative paintings followed before he returned to his more familiar style and subject matter, including a 1948 reimagining of his Lost Jockey, painted the same year as his first one-man exhibition in Paris.
‘The Enchanted Domain’ and ‘The Son of Man’
With the arrival of the 1950s, Magritte enjoyed the ongoing international interest in his work and continued his prolific output. In 1951, he was commissioned to paint a cycle of murals for the casino at Knocke-le-Zoute, a town on the Belgian coast. Completed in 1953 and titled The Enchanted Domain, they were a celebration of some of his best-known images. More commissions around Belgium followed, as did major exhibitions of his work in Brussels and the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. Some of his most important works from this period include the paintings Golconda and The Glass Key. He also introduced the now-iconic apple into his work, most recognizably in 1964’s The Son of Man.
Later Life and Legacy
Despite having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1963, Magritte was able to travel to New York City for a 1965 retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art. Magritte also explored other media during this time, making a series of short films that featured his wife, Georgette, as well as experimenting with sculpture. After a period of prolonged illness, on August 15, 1967, Magritte died at the age of 68. His work proved to be a primary influence on pop artists such as Andy Warhol and has since been celebrated in countless exhibitions around the world. The Magritte Museum opened in Brussels in 2009.
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