René Magritte

1. What was René Magritte's nationality? Belgian.

2. What kind of style was famous in his paintings? Surrealism.
3. At what age René Magritte died? 68 years old.
4. Magritte painted to express his feelings towards: alienation and
abandonment.
5. Rene Magritte started his art career designing what? Wallpaper and
sketches for advertisements.
6. Choose one of the next paintings of René Magritte, and make a text or
conceptual map that describes the main characteristics of the painting, the
message inside the masterpiece. What is the meaning?
Frustrated desires are a common theme in René Magritte’s work. Here, a barrier of
fabric prevents the intimate embrace between two lovers, transforming an act of
passion into one of isolation and frustration. A depiction of the inability to fully
unveil the true nature of even our most intimate companions.
Enshrouded faces were a common motif in Magritte’s art. The artist was 14 when
his mother committed suicide by drowning. He witnessed her body being fished
from the water, her wet nightgown wrapped around her face. This trauma inspired
a series of works in which Magritte obscured his subjects’ faces. “My painting is
visible images which conceal nothing,” he wrote, “they evoke mystery and, indeed,
when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What
does it mean?’ It
does not mean
anything, because
mystery means
nothing either, it is
unknowable.
René Magritte, (born November 21, 1898, Lessines, Belgium—died August 15,
1967, Brussels), Belgian artist, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters,
whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy, and mystery. His
works were characterized by particular symbols—the female torso, the bourgeois
“little man,” the bowler hat, the apple, the castle, the rock, the window, and other
ordinary objects, which were often set in unusual or unsettling situations.Magritte’s
father was a tailor, and his mother was a milliner who drowned herself in the River
Sambre when Magritte was about 14 years old. Thereafter, he and his two brothers
were raised by his grandmother. As a teenager, he met Georgette Berger, who
would become his wife nearly 10 years later. After studying at the Brussels
Academy of Fine Arts (1916–18), Magritte became a designer for a wallpaper
factory and then did sketches for advertisements.
In 1926 Magritte signed a contract with a Brussels art gallery, which allowed him to
become a full-time painter. In 1927 he and his wife moved to a suburb of Paris.
There he met and befriended several of the Paris Surrealists, including poets
André Breton and Paul Éluard, and he became familiar with the collages of Max
Ernst.
After three years, Magritte and his wife returned to Brussels, where he was active
once again in the Belgian Surrealist movement and where he remained for the rest
of his life. During the 1940s Magritte experimented with a variety of styles,
sometimes incorporating elements of Impressionism, for the rest of his life he
continued to produce his enigmatic and illogical images in a readily identifiable
style.
As a child, Magritte was enthusiastic about the sea and wide skies, which figure
strongly in his paintings. Two museums in Brussels celebrate Magritte: The René
Magritte Museum, largely a biographical museum, is located in the house occupied
by the artist and his wife between 1930 and 1954; and the Magritte Museum,
featuring some 250 of the artist’s works, opened in 2009 at the Royal Museum of
Fine Arts. In 1936 Magritte's marriage became troubled when he met a young
performance artist, Sheila Legge, and began an affair with her. Magritte arranged
for his friend, Paul Colinet, to entertain and distract Georgette, but this led to an
affair between Georgette and Colinet. Magritte and his wife did not reconcile until
1940.Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967, aged 68, and was
interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels.