Humanities Information

By George Baxter

The surrealist art on canvas of Rene Magritte is said to represent his efforts to put an end to the sense of familiarity. As an artist he considered ordinary things as subject for his canvases, modified them with his imagination and presented them with such illusory blends and associations that very often the viewers were moved to challenge their genuineness. Rene Magritte is therefore an architect of thought provoking visual enigmas, which are sure to provoke thoughts in the spectators. Many contemporary artists have been influenced by the remarkable works of Rene Magritte.

René François Ghislain Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 at Lessines, a province of Hainaut in Belgium. As a popular surrealist artist, Rene Magritte is renowned for his amusing and thought provoking images.

Rene Magritte started painting at the age of twelve; his father Leopold encouraged him to continue his artistic pursuit. At the age of fourteen, his mother committed suicide due to depression and young Rene was greatly affected after seeing her body, with the face covered. This incident in his life is reflected in his early paintings including "Les Amants", in which individuals are depicted with cloth hiding their faces.

In 1914, René enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels to study painting and learn about the various techniques employed by those artists who followed the symbolic style. During his tenure at the Fine Arts Academy, he became acquainted with many famous artists including Pierre Bourgeois, E.L.T Mesens and Pierre Flouquet. Although he was interested in the futurist movement and cubism, his real inspiration was the surrealist works of Giorgio De Chirico.

After completing his studies at the Academy, he married his long time lover Georgette Berger in 1922. For the next four years he found employment as assistant designer in a wallpaper factory until 1926, and it was at this time that he created his first surrealistic painting, "The Lost Jockey". Later in 1927, he conducted his first painting exhibition at Brussels and received massive criticism and ill-treatment, after which he left Brussels and went to Paris in a disheartened mood. There he met Andre Breton, and subsequently became actively involved in the surrealist movement.  

The paintings of Rene Magritte is often considered as a combination of both poetic and philosophical content based on certain social as well as intellectual developments of the latter half of the twentieth century. Rene's talents and skill for painting realistic objects and figures has been approved even by his former critics. He was recognised as a real expert with soul and a unique style. His way of depicting ordinary items in an amazing manner is referred to as "magic realism" and this quality makes him stand apart from other surrealists.

The famous canvases of Rene Magritte include "Companions of Fear", "The Flavour of Tears", "The Empire of Lights", "The False Mirror", "Beautiful World" and many more. In the 1950s, he completed two works using the fresco style and these are "The Enchanted Realm" and the "The Ignorant Fairy".

Rene Magritte died at the age of 68 on August 15th 1967, in Brussels due to pancreatic cancer.