Rene Magritte

Born in 1898, Magritte showed an early interest in art that was both nurtured and shadowed by personal tragedy. His mother’s suicide when he was thirteen left a profound emotional mark on him, one that arguably informed the surreal and sometimes unsettling qualities of his later work. Magritte studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he was exposed to a range of artistic influences from Futurism to Cubism. In 1922, he was shown a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico’s painting "The Song of Love", an experience that reportedly brought him to tears. He later described it as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time". He had found a conceptual framework that would help to shape his distinctive approach to visual art for many years to come.

In 1927 Magritte joined the Surrealist movement in Paris, though his work would soon diverge from the dreamlike abstraction of his contemporaries. Instead of delving into the subconscious through automatism, he employed a precise, almost academic painting style to present ordinary objects in unexpected, often paradoxical juxtapositions. Works such as "The Treachery of Images" (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”) and "The Son of Man" became hallmarks of his philosophical engagement with language, perception, and reality. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Magritte refined his use of visual irony and ambiguity, creating paintings that invited viewers to question the nature of representation itself.

Success initially came slowly for Magritte; during the Second World War he was forced to eke out a living by making forged paintings in the styles of Picasso, Titian, Ernst and de Chirico, among others. Nevertheless, recognition of his importance grew steadily during his lifetime. By the 1950s his reputation had expanded beyond Europe, with solo exhibitions in New York and increasing interest from collectors and critics across the world. He was featured in prominent group shows and retrospectives, including at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His influence on postwar art, particularly on Pop and Conceptualism, was acknowledged by leading figures such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. 

In November 2024, Magritte's work achieved a new auction record when his painting "L'Empire des Lumières" sold for over $121 million at Christie's in New York.