Magritte made ordinary objects refuse to behave
René Magritte, 21 November 1898 to 15 August 1967, placed familiar objects in unexpected settings to question how pictures relate to reality. The Belgian Surrealist spent years paying bills with advertising and posters, forged paintings in lean postwar years, and later shaped pop, minimalist, and conceptual art.
Magritte was the eldest son of a tailor and textile merchant in Lessines and started drawing lessons in 1910. In February 1912 his mother drowned herself in the Sambre, and her body was found 16 days later; the tale that he saw it pulled out, with her dress over her face, is now doubted, though it has been linked to his veiled lovers of 1927 and 1928. He studied at the Brussels academy from 1916 to 1918, found the teaching dull, and painted in Futurist and Cubist modes. After infantry service he married Georgette Berger, whom he had known since 1913, and wept on seeing a reproduction of de Chirico's The Song of Love, saying his eyes saw thought for the first time.
He drew wallpaper and designed posters and advertisements until a 1926 contract with Galerie Le Centaure let him paint full time; The Lost Jockey, his first surreal picture, followed. His first solo show in 1927 was panned, so he moved to Paris, joined André Breton's Surrealists, and in 1929 published an essay on words and images in their final journal issue. When Le Centaure closed he returned to Brussels, opened an advertising agency with his brother Paul, and sold nothing from 1930 to 1932, surviving on a stipend arranged by Claude Spaak.
Shows followed in New York in 1936 and London in 1938, and the collector Edward James housed him rent-free and appears in Not to Be Reproduced. Staying in occupied Brussels broke his ties with Breton and produced a sunny Renoir period, then a crude Vache period. In lean postwar years he faked Picassos and Braques and even printed forged banknotes, yet Belgium later issued a 500-franc note in his honour.
Source: René Magritte
