René Magritte - the magician of surrealism

René François Ghislain Magritte - an artist whose pictures make people dream. The motifs of his pictures are therefore often interpreted as the reproduction of brain -fitting. However, his works do not come from a dream world, on the contrary, Magritte whole artistic work was obliged to present the reality .

The Belgian is not an eccentric self -portrayal like the Paris surrealists , but a factual engineer of the impossible with just one intention: to blow up the boundary between imagination and reality.

It is the surrealistic outsider , which deliberately turns away from the usual surrealistic techniques and approaches. Its brush stroke is minimalistic and free of emotional traces or personal dramas. His pictures look like didactic plates that could serve as teaching material for higher educational institutions.

The artist himself describes his painting style as banal and emphasizes that he is not an artist, but a thinking person who expresses his thoughts through painting.

Magritte's works of art are nevertheless characterized by an unmistakable visual language that kidnaps the viewer into a world full of puzzles and secrets. In this biographical contribution you will learn more about the life and works of René Magritte and will also immerse yourself in the fascinating world of surrealism.

Significant stations in the life of Magritte

• 1898: Magritte was born in Lessines (Belgium)
• 1912: His mother is found in the Sambre river
• 1915: First painting
• 1916-18: He visits the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels
• 1921-22: Military service
• 1922: Wedding with Georgette Berger
• 1926: Start of his career as a full -time artist
• 1929: He paints ceci n'est pas une pipe (the betrayal of the pictures)
• 1944: After the Second World War, he resumed his career as a surrealistic artist
• 1964: He paints his legendary work Le Fils de l'Homme (The Son)
• 1967: Magritte dies to pancreatic cancer

childhood

René François Ghislain Magritte saw the light of the world in Lessines, a city in the Walloon province of Hennegau in Belgium . His father, Léopold Magritte, was a Schneider and merchant while his mother, Régina Bertinchamps, worked as a hat maker before her marriage.

Shortly before René's birth, the couple moved to Lessines, where Régina's widowed mother also lived in the common household. René had two younger brothers named Raymond (born 1900) and Paul (born 1902).

In the spring of 1904, the family moved to Châtelet, a city in the province of Hennegau in the Walloon part of Belgium. At the age of twelve, René started painting and drawing (1910). Once a week he attended an art course. So far, three works from this year have been found.

Thanks to the business success of his father, who worked in the food oil trade at the time, the family was able to move to a larger house in 1911 that was built according to their plans. René's father saw him a child prodigy and hanged his works in the house of the house so that every visitor could admire her.

Early trauma - suicide of the mother

The Belgian painter did not immediately discover the world of the unreal, the art movement, which became known as surrealism . The René, which was already gifted in childhood, had reason to flee in dream worlds early.

When he was 14, his mother drowned himself for reasons that were not known. The young Magritte was a witness when his mother, dressed only with a white nightgown, was pulled out of the water 17 days later. Her body was laid out in the house for a day.

It is possible that the many representations of women were inspired by this traumatic experience with a white cloth over the head. The young Magritte was silent about the loss of his mother and only spoke about it once with his close friend Louis Scutenaire.

At that moment, however, he felt an "immense pride" to be the "pitiful center of a drama". From 1925 these experiences appeared in several of his works, including "the dreams of a lonely walker" .

As a result of this event, the father fled with his three sons from the romantic town of Châtelet, surrounded by nature, into the nearby Charleroi industrial city.

Here was the life harder, the already traumatized René lost in the literary magic worlds, the Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Maurice Leblanc (the master thief Arsène Lupin), Gaston Leroux (the phantom of the opera) and the Fantômas novel (Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain) kept ready.

Study time at the Académie des Beaux-Art in Brussels

With 15 Magritte discovered the illustrative art and femininity for himself, Georgette Berger was the model of his first, still impressionistic work. After graduating from high school, he decided to study the art from 1916 at the Académie des Beaux-Art in Brussels, in his studies his work already showed a significantly futuristic well-received, and cubist influences can also be identified.

At the beginning of his artistic career, Magritte was inspired by the works of the Hague School, especially by the painters Jacob Maris and Pierre Paul. Although he could only occasionally afford to study at the academy, he later remembered that he learned to draw and perspective and anatomy from Emile Vandamme-Sylva. His oil paintings from 1917 reflect the post -impressionist influences of Pierre Bonnard.

In 1919 Magritte ended his art studies , married Georgette Berger and was initially forced to earn the livelihood of the young family by drawing wallpaper patterns in a factory, as a poster painter and as advertisers.

In 1919 the art center "Le Center d'Art" by Victor Bourgeois and Aimé Decercq founded. Pierre Bourgeois, the younger brother of the architect, was a fellow student of Magritte and a passionate modernist.

It is said that Pierre Bourgeois Magritte drew attention futurism Magritte presented his works at the opening exhibition of the art center.

Early work and initial success as an artist

In January 1920, the ways of the artist René Magritte and later art dealer and artist Elt Mesens a group exhibition. Mesens, who Dadaism avant -garde by Eric Satie .

He introduced Magritte into the Dadaist movement and persuaded his father to hire him as a piano teacher for his brother Paul. Mesens finally committed Magritte in 1925 as an employee of the magazine "œsophage" and a year later for the critical surrealistic artificial letter "Marie" .

In October 1920, René Magritte visited the congress of modern art in Antwerp, which was organized by Jozef Peeters and Huib Hoste. During his visit to the Royal Museum, he came across a triptych by the Veristic painter Eugène Laerman from 1896, which delighted him in such a way that he at least theoretically dealt with modernism .

At the end of the year, Magritte was able to present his works for the first time at an international exhibition in Geneva, including his work "women and flowers".

Wallpaper, pattern and advertising graphics

At the beginning of 1922, René Magritte, who was already engaged to work as a sample artist in a wallpaper factory in Haren. The factory, which Peters Lacroix describes as one of the leading companies of Belgium, probably employed Magritte for two years. In June 1922 he married Georgette Berger in the Marienkirche of Schaerbeek.

Unfortunately, a miscarriage occurred early on, which caused Magritte to do without children to protect his wife's health. During this time Magritte painted some acts that were influenced by Fernand Léger. These complex compositions were characterized by strong, flowing rhythms.

In 1923, Magritte and Victor Servranckx planned the publication "L'Art: Défense de l'Estétique" at the publisher Editions ça Ira in Antwerp. He also took part in the international exhibition of the publisher, in which artists such as Alexander Rodtschenko, El Lissitzky, Lyonel Feininger and László Moholy-Nagy exhibited.

In January 1923, Magritte also exhibited in the Georges Giroux gallery in Brussels, together with Flouquet, Servranckx, Peeters and Paul Delvaux. This year he painted his most abstract pictures and started working as a poster and advertisinger. Finally he sold his first picture, a portrait of the singer Evelyne Brélia.

Magritte and surrealism

In 1923, Magritte decided, inspired by his first sales success, from now on "only painting the objects with their eye -catching details" . Although the sale of the portrait of a well -known singer had given him new artistic self -confidence, a few more years passed before he was able to conclude an agreement with the Brüssler gallery "Le Centaure" , which from now on secured the daily living.

Magritte was finally able to concentrate on his art, who now got the first surrealistic features “The Lost Jockey”

In the summer or autumn of 1923, René Magritte finally turned to surrealism after he had experienced a revelation "Liebenlied" Although the exact date is not known, the influence of the Greek-Italian painter can only be recognized in Magritte's works in 1925. In addition to de Chirico, George Grosz and Carlo Carrà were also important sources of inspiration for the Belgian artist.

In the spring of 1924, René Magritte gave up his job as a wallpaper launcher and became an advertising graphic artist, where he worked mainly for the haute couture and sheet music until 1929. In 1924 and 1925, Magritte painted only about 15 pictures and earned hardly any money.

With "The White Man" , a portrait of Marcel Lecomte, which was created in spring 1925, Magritte gave up the stylization and simplification of his early works. He was based on André Derain's "Le Chevalier X" (1914, first condition) and also dealt with Max Ernst in "The Window" (spring/summer 1925).

In November 1925, the first group exhibition "La Peinture Surréaliste [Surrealist painting]" place in the Pierre gallery in Paris, in which Magritte presented his first surrealistic pictures. He decided to paint the objects with their eye -catching details. In the same month he also created the scenes for two one act: "Believe" by Herwarth Walden and "Rien Qu'un Homme" by Paul Deauville - his only excursion to the theater world.

René Magritte signed an exclusive contract with Paul-Gustave van Hecke , a Belgian journalist, author and art lover. From January 1926 to September 1927, Magritte created almost 100 paintings. In October 1926, Walter Schwarzenberg the "Le Centaure" gallery in Brussels and acquired half of Van Hecke's contract with Magritte.

Thanks to Schwarzenberg's support, Magritte experienced one of the most productive phases of his career. Under these conditions, recognition was no longer long in coming, “Le Centaure” organized a first exhibition in 1927 only with his pictures.

Magritte and the Paris surrealists around André Breton

Magritte now moved to Paris , the center of surrealistic art. He was enthusiastic about the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico, who also inspired other important surrealists, and also got to know surrealists as such as André Breton and Paul éluard.

The Paris surrealists who gathered around the writer André Breton in the French capital were not exactly enthusiastic about the Belgian. When he appeared in her circle in September 1927 to get to know like -minded people, the subversive artist in bourgeois clothing is greeted by the revolutionary.

Although Magritte's calculated visual worlds fulfill the surrealistic principle of combining different realities in a work of art, they do not really fit the random technique of "automatism" , which should reveal the unconscious and is preferred by most artists in the group (Magritte will later call him "very ineffective").

In Breton's series "Surrealism and Painting", the Belgian is not mentioned at any word. In December 1929 there was a scandal when Magritte's Catholic woman Georgette appears at a party at the writer with a golden cross around her neck: Breton asks her to remove "this item" As a result, Magritte with Georgette leaves the party - and half a year later the city.

Only years later, when the revolutionary furor of the surrealists has subsided and the "automatism" is no longer her preferred way to find image, Magritte reconciles himself with the art Jakobiners and shows his works at group exhibitions in London, Paris and New York, as in the Geo Epoche: "René Magritte-Master of Deception" .

Return to Brussels

Not as the first artist he stirred violently with André Breton and therefore went back to Brussels in 1930, during this time the circle of his artists grew. Is known z. B. a close contact Magritte with Hans Arp, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí .

After returning to Brussels, Magritte was in a ground floor apartment that would be his home for the next 24 years. The apartment was filled with antiques from department stores and had a dining room in which he painted, as well as a small garden in which he built celery and onions.

Magritte developed into one of the leading heads of surrealism in the following time, in 1938 he was represented with several works exposure of International du Surréisme In addition, he developed into other directions, made short films and entered and left the Belgium Communist Party, gave lectures on his work and worked for several publications from 1930.

Although Magritte gradually had success - with his first solo exhibition in New York in 1936, followed by exhibitions in Paris, Rome and large retrospectives in Brussels and New York - he remained loyal to his Belgian homeland and hardly traveled.

His works were bought by American art stars such as Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein and his ideas were taken up by numerous advertising graphics. In addition, his thinking games were sold as posters in department stores all over the world.

Magical realism - the distinctive style of Magritte

Magritte increasingly took a special position because he had developed his own approach and his own style, his “magical realism” . He painted objects of everyday life, whereby he always adhered to the same objects, Magritte admirers are familiar with the pipe and the apple, the curtain and the bowl hat, the pigeon and the blue sky, the handcuffs and lions, the eggs and the bonded balloons and the people with the cloth over the head.

These details are not chosen by chance, but usually relate to drastic childhood experiences. They are depicted in a naturalistic manner to the smallest, but in such a unreal way they are alienated and put together again that every attentive viewer of surrealism fulfills the task that Magritte had intended to do: The traditional thinking patterns and visual habits are thoroughly shaken, the horizon of experience is exceeded, the reality is shown by its unreal side.

Despite his critical distance from the church and the profane objects that he uses in his works, Magritte seems to be obtained from the return of the repressed, as is postulated Sigmund Freud

the conscious expression of his painting and everyday life can be read as humility that serves a higher purpose - the secret that is hidden behind the things. Magritte calls it the "mystery" .

The "mystery" is Magritte's sacred grail: an intimate fascination that can mean in its language use as much as the poetry of an object, the shock of recognizing or the invisible relationship of things. Magritte's “mystery” cannot be found in the hereafter or in transcendence, but in the profane objects of everyday life.

"Because everything in our lives," says Magritte, "is mystery."

Like a monk who prays the rosary every day, Magritte approaches this mystery through constant practice and repetition.

Période Renoir and the flirt with impressionism

During the World War II, this style was interrupted by a short flirt with impressionism , which is also said to have its reason in the reasonable fear of raids and attacks by the National Socialists, who classified his pictures as “degenerate art” .

Cheerful pictures were taken in the style of the well-known Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Magritte commented on the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in Belgium as follows:

"The German line -up described the turning point in my art. My pictures expressed fear of the war, the experience of war has taught me that art matters in art. I live in an unpleasant world, and my work is intended as a counterattack."

Période Vache - the cow period

“Période Renoir” in the “Période Vache” this counterattack was even more willful, the pictures of this “cow period” were very colorful and also quite grossy.

Probably too grossy for Magritte, who soon returned to his surrealistic style. The pictures of his late phase were impressively mysterious, moved and sensual , they show many new sophisticated shades of blue and a refined painting technology.

The pictures of the “cow period” were characterized by bright colors and closed outline lines and represent a clear break to his previous work. The dispute with the well-known surrealists Paul éluard and André Breton led to this radical change in Magritte's art.

The rejection of his earlier works caused him to take new ways and develop a completely new artistic concept. In these “wild” pictures you will find elements such as comedy , irony as well as cartoon -like figures and open representations of sexuality .

René Magritte's “cow period” can be seen as a turning point in his artistic work-a phase full of innovations, provocation and rebellion compared to the established art business.

With this liberation, Magritte also returned to his fine and naturalistic painting style of the 1920s and 1930s. His new paintings were provocative, but at the same time they also reflected his return to the more classic form of realism .

Rebellion against Paris surrealism and the realm of lights

The 1947 surrealism exhibition in Paris marked a kind of resurrection movement for this art movement in Europe. However, Magritte's works were unfortunately only assigned to the retrospective part - a fact that emphasized deep irritation.

Frustration and disappointment were the driving forces behind Magritte's decision to exhibit his works in another gallery. He quickly created a series of provocative paintings with which he wanted to shock the Paris surrealism.

He was supported by the poet Louis Soutenaire , who also provided the titles for many of these pictures. The cooperation between Magritte and Soutenaire led to a remarkable synergy between word and picture. Magritte was inspired by various influences in his art - including comic artists and artists of Fauvism like Henri Matisse .

In 1947, René Magritte may also began one of the most famous series in his work, which has replaced his previous pastel and light works. This series comprised a total of 17 oil paintings and 10 Gouachen with the title "The Reich der Lichter" .

In these works of art, Magritte combines a nightly house front with a burning lantern and a bright bright cloud of clouds. The pictures of this series have something lyrical, nostalgic and, above all, calm of themselves. They remind the viewer of past times and at the same time convey a feeling of peace and harmony.

With their subtle wit, they also build directly on Magritte's earlier work before the war. In a lecture in London, Magritte revealed his surreal technology behind these impressive paintings. He quoted a line from André Breton's poem "L'Aigrette" :

If only the sun rails tonight ”.

Years later, he literally implemented this line in his pictures, which is still amazed today. Magritte's ability to use surreal elements to create poetic worlds was remarkable. By merging various reality fragments, he not only managed to create unusual visual constellations, but also to cause deep emotional resonances from the viewer.

The series “The Reich der Lichter” is an outstanding example of Magritte's championship in surrealistic art and its ability to expand the limits of what is imaginable. The pictures of this series radiate a special atmosphere - they look familiar at the same time and yet mysterious.

They invite the viewer to immerse themselves in their world and be captured by their poetry and magic.

Magrittes late work

From 1953 his last major works were created, wall paintings from eight pictures for a casino.

The remaining almost one and a half decades until his surprising death on August 15, 1967 exhibited Magritte in many ways, as in 1959 on Documenta II and won prizes, as the Guggenheim Prize for Belgium in 1956, but took his own production more calmly.

The imaginative people below us are still happy to make you think of thinking; And Magritte's work has had an important influence on quite a few artists, e.g. B. on the artists of Pop Art and many concept artists .

The subsequent 5-minute video shows some of his best-known works:

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

Owner and managing director of Kunstplaza. Publicist, editor and passionate blogger in the field of art, design and creativity since 2011. Successful conclusion in web design as part of a university degree (2008). Further development of creativity techniques through courses in free drawing, expression painting and theatre/acting. Profound knowledge of the art market through many years of journalistic research and numerous collaborations with actors/institutions from art and culture.

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