René Magritte
Belgian·1898–1967
Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte (1898-1967) created images that question the nature of reality and representation, placing familiar objects in impossible contexts with deadpan precision. Born in Lessines, Belgium, he was marked early by tragedy when his mother drowned herself in 1912, her face reportedly covered by her nightgown when recovered. After studying at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, Magritte worked as a commercial artist before seeing Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love in 1922, an encounter that shaped his artistic approach. His first Surrealist painting, The Lost Jockey, appeared in 1926.
Magritte moved to Paris in 1927 after a poorly received Brussels exhibition, joining André Breton's Surrealist circle, but returned to Belgium in 1930 and remained there for the rest of his life. His mature style features bowler-hatted men, blue skies with clouds, apples, and impossible juxtapositions rendered in precise, illustrative technique. Works like The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe) directly challenge relationships between objects and their representations. Unlike other Surrealists, Magritte rejected painterly gesture for cool, impersonal surfaces that heighten his conceptual puzzles. The Magritte Museum in Brussels, opened in 2009, displays some 200 works including The Return and The Empire of Light. The Museum of Modern Art held a 1965 retrospective, and his works hang at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tate Modern. His imagery continues influencing advertising, film, and contemporary art.
Notable Works by René Magritte
6 paintings catalogued with museum locations
Museums with René Magritte's Work
3 museums display Magritte's works. Click any museum to see visiting info and the specific works they hold.
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About René Magritte
Magritte was a leading Surrealist, though his cool, impersonal painting technique distinguished him from other Surrealists who emphasized gestural, automatic methods. His deadpan realistic style made impossible scenes all the more disturbing by rendering them with photographic clarity.
The Magritte Museum in Brussels displays 200 works in a dedicated building. Major paintings also hang at the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Magritte repeatedly used bowler-hatted men, green apples, cloudy blue skies, pipes, and birds. These familiar objects appear in impossible contexts that question perception and reality, becoming icons of 20th-century art.
This 1929 painting shows a pipe with text reading "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe). Magritte's point: the painting is not a pipe but a representation of one. This simple philosophical puzzle challenged assumptions about images and reality.
Seeing Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love in 1922 transformed Magritte's approach completely. De Chirico's mysterious juxtapositions of unrelated objects in dreamlike spaces provided the template for Magritte's mature Surrealist vision of dislocated reality.
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