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.
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
Marien, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. 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, 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
This piece I found on
rene magrittes official web site it is written as and informative peace so
people know the biography of the artist along with the insperation of certain
peices, the hardships of his mothers suicide and also how he made an income
selling fake Picassos during the war. This text is written for new comers to
the website and people who are researching rene's works, the text does not come
across bias in my opinion as it is not written as to make the artist sound good
in fact it seems very truthful and puts across the good and the bad such as the
selling of fake Piccassosis which is highly illegal but shows the reader that
he must have had a great amount of skill to recreate the style.
Napoleons
death mask
This
is the death mask of the French emperor Napoleon Bonerpart, Magritte created at
least 5 of these plaster casts all with the sky and cloud design which is
apparently associated with death dreams and depth of the sky. I like the
consept of this peice but in my opinion the design could have been alot more
interesting.
The
Red Model was an early peace of Rene Magritte’s, I like the negative space in
the image and believe that this is one of Magritte’s better pieces though it is
not a busy piece there are some little details that bring this image to life
such as the coin in the bottom right hand corner is so detailed that you can
date the time the painting was meant to be set by the shape of the kings head,
there are also little bits and bobs on the floor that make this painting a joy
to look at in my opinion the more you look the more detail and skill is discovered.
The feet/ shoes are positioned on one of the power points of the rule of thirds
grid making the main subject pop out more, the texture in the wood grain and
gravel gives the image a lot of depth that makes the image look 3D. Although I
like the image the reason behind it i could not grasp so I done a little
research into the Red Model and discovered that apparently the shoes morphing
to feet and back again is the portraying the visiting of reality and illusion
in Renes mind and the reason there it is just the feet/shoes is apparently due
to the suicide of his mother and Magritte saying “where is my mother",
these opinions on the meaning of this image could be correct though I don’t
think these are the reasons why.
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