Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte was born November 21, 1898 in Lessines, Belgium, the son of a tailor. He began drawing at age 12 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. The death of his mother from suicide when he was fourteen influenced some of his paintings. Around 1916, he began publishing some of his drawings and began his career as a designer of wallpaper, posters, illustrations
...see more »and sheet music covers. He was married for forty-five years to his wife, Georgette, whom he first met as a teenager and who modeled for him.
Magritte's work was influenced by the techniques of Dada, Futurism and Cubism and he was greatly affected by the work of surrealists Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst. He became a member of a surrealist group with his first surrealist painting, 'The Lost Jockey', being introduced in 1926. He developed his unique style with mysteries depicting the unexpected, animating the inanimate, painting a shoe with toes , substituting a torso for a face, or other surprises. He felt if you needed an explanation for his paintings, you were overanalyzing them.
Except for several periods when he lived in France, Magritte spent most of his life in his native Belgium. He sold his first painting in 1923, and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. While in France, he became friends with fellow artists Dali, Andre Breton, Max Ernst and writer Paul Eluard. In the 1950s he did two frescoes, one for a casino and the other for the Palace of Fine Arts in Charleroi. He attended a retrospective of his work that was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965. Another was held in Rotterdam in 1967.
Magritte's health started to decline in 1965 and on August 15, 1967, Magritte died of cancer in Belgium. His work is exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. It can also be found at art retailers everywhere. He is considered to have been a major influence on the works of other famous painters and artists, including Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Vija Celmins, Joseph Kosuth, Sherrie Levine, Richard Artschwager, Jeff Koons, Martin Kippenberger, Jim Shaw, Raymond Pettibon, and Robert Gober.
A partial listing of his works:
1926 The Menaced Assassin (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1928 Threatening Weather (Penrose Collection, London)
1928 The False Mirror (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1928-9 The Palace of Curtains, III (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1928-9 The Wind and the Song
1934, 1935 The Human Condition
1935 Portrait (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1950 The Empire of Light, II (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1953 Golconda (D and J de Menil Collection, Houston, Texas)
1955 Memory of a Voyage (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1959 The Castle of the Pyrenees« see less
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