René Magritte (Famous Belgian Painter)
René
François Ghislain Magritte
(21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He
became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fell
under the umbrella of surrealism. His work challenges observers' preconditioned
perceptions of reality.
Early life and career
Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest
son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant, and Régina (née 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 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. 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 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 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 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.
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, a painting also
known as Not to be Reproduced.
During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in
Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful,
painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir Period", as a
reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in
German-occupied Belgium. In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work,
he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism
in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache Period", he
painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself
through the production of fake Picassos, Braques and Chiricos—a fraudulent
repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during
the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul
Magritte and fellow Surrealist and 'surrogate son' Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen
the task of selling the forgeries.[8] At the end of 1948, he returned to the style and themes of his prewar
surrealistic 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, aged 68, 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.
(source: Wikipedia)
