|
René François Ghislain
Magritte
Nov 21, 1898 – Aug 15, 1967
Birthplace: Lessines, Belgium
Educated: Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts: Brussels, Belgium
Residences: Lessines, Belgium;
Brussels, Belgium; Paris, France
Expertise:
Surrealist Painting
|
René Magritte was a
surrealist artist, born in Lessines, Belgium. In 1912, Magritte's mother
committed suicide by drowning herself in the river Sambre. He studied at the
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for two years until 1918. During
which time he met Georgette Berger, whom he married in 1922. In 1926,
Magritte produced his first surrealist painting, 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. A consummate
technician, his work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary
objects, or an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The
representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in
his painting, La trahison des images (The Betrayal Of Images), which
shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store
advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, Ceci n'est pas une pipe
(This is not a pipe), which seems a contradiction, but means that the
image of the pipe is not itself a pipe. In his book, This Is Not a Pipe,
French critic Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox. René
Magritte described his paintings by saying, "My painting is visible images
which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of
my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'.
It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is
unknowable." Magritte's 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. René Magritte died of cancer on August 15, 1967 and was interred in
Schaarbeek Cemetery, Brussels. |
