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Ren¨¦ Magritte at Artprice. To look at auction records, find Magritte's works in upcoming auctions, check price levels and indexes for his works, read his biography and view his signature, access the Artprice database.
Ren¨¦ Magritte was born on the 21st November, 1898 in Hainaut, Belgium. His father was a tailor and a merchant. As his business did not go well the family had to move often. Ren¨¦ lost his mother early and tragically ¨C she committed suicide for unclear reasons. Ren¨¦ was only 14 years old at the time.
From 1916 through 1918 Magritte studied in the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels (Acad¨¦mie Royale des Beaux-Arts). He became a wallpaper designer and commercial artist. His early painting works were executed under the influence of the Cubism and Futurism (1918-20), then he was inspired by the Purists and Fernand L¨¦ger. In 1922 Magritte married Georgette Berger, with whom he first became acquainted when fifteen years old. After meeting again in 1920, she became his model and then wife.
The acquaintance with Giorgio de Chirico's Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting) and Dadaistic poetry constituted an important artistic turning-point for Magritte. In 1925 he came close with a group of Dadaists and co-operated in the magazines Aesophage and Marie, together with E.L.T. Mesens, Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Schwitters, Tzara and Man Ray.
In 1926 Magritte painted The Lost Jockey, it is his first painting that he allowed to be labeled as "Surrealist". After his first, badly-received, one-man show in Brussels in 1927, he left for Paris. In 1927-30 Magritte lived in France, where he participated in the activities of the Surrealists, establishing a close friendship in particular with Max Ernst, Dali, Andr¨¦ Breton and especially with Paul Eluard.
In Paris, Magritte's system of conceptual painting was formed, it remained almost unchanged until the end of his life. His painting manner, intentionally dry and academic, "polished in the technical sense" (p.18 Magritte. By Marcel Paquet. Taschen. 1992) with precise and clean draughtsmanship demonstrated a paradoxical ability to depict trustworthy an unreal, unthinkable reality.
In Magritte¡¯s works the morphologically similar objects belonging to different classes, exchange some qualities or unite as hybrids (Companions of Fear. 1942, The Explanation, 1954, The Flavour of Tears, 1948); a night landscape gleams under daylit skies (The Empire of Lights 1954).
Demonstrating the problems of visual perception and illusionary of images, Magritte used the symbols of mirrors, eyes, windows, stages and curtains and pictures within pictures (The False Mirror, 1935, The Key to the Fields. 1936, Beautiful World. 1962.)
Magritte was fond of philosophy and literature. Many of his paintings reflect his impressions of .... |
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