René François Ghislain Magritte was born on November 21, 1898, in Lessines, Belgium. He studied intermittently between 1916 and 1918 at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Magritte first exhibited at the Centre d’Art in Brussels in 1920. After completing military service in 1921, he worked briefly as a designer in a wallpaper factory. In 1923 he participated with Lyonel Feininger, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Belgian Paul Joostens in an exhibition at the Cercle Royal Artistique in Antwerp. In 1924 he collaborated with E. L. T. Mesens on the review Oesophage.
In 1927 Magritte was given his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels. Later that year the artist left Brussels to establish himself in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, near Paris, where he frequented the Surrealist circle, which included Jean Arp, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, and Joan Miró. In 1928 Magritte took part in the Exposition surréaliste at the Galerie Goemans in Paris. He returned to Belgium in 1930, and three years later was given a solo show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Magritte’s first solo exhibition in the United States took place at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1936 and the first in England at the London Gallery in 1938. He was also represented in the 1936 Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Throughout the 1940s Magritte showed frequently at the Galerie Dietrich in Brussels. During the following two decades he executed various mural commissions in Belgium. From 1953 he exhibited frequently at the galleries of Alexander Iolas in New York, Paris, and Geneva. Magritte retrospectives were held in 1954 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and in 1960 at the Museum for Contemporary Arts, Dallas, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. On the occasion of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965, Magritte traveled to the United States for the first time, and the following year he visited Israel. Magritte died on August 15, 1967, in Brussels, shortly after the opening of a major exhibition of his work at the Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
All images © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025
Part 1 of a 2-part post on the works of Réne Magritte:
1919 Nude oil on canvas 40 x 29 m Brachot Gallery, Brussels, Belgium |
1920 Landscape oil on canvas 83 x 64 cm |
1920 Portrait of Pierre Bourgeois (Belgian Poet) oil on canvas (size not found) |
1921 Portrait of Pierre Broodcoorens (Flemish writer) (details not found) |
1921 Bathers oil on canvas 55 x 38 cm |
1922 The Model oil on canvas 40 x 29 cm Palais des beaux-arts de Charleroi, Charleroi, Belgium |
1923 Three nudes in an interior oil on canvas 59.5 x 55.5 cm |
1923 Self portrait oil on canvas 80 x 60 cm Musée René Magritte in Brussels, Belgium |
1923 Modern oil on canvas (details not found) |
1923 Georgette at the Piano oil on canvas 44 x 36.5 cm Brachot Gallery, Brussels, Belgium |
1923 Donna oil on canvas 46 x 38 cm |
1923 Three nudes in an interior oil on canvas 59.5 x 55.5 cm |
1924 Youth oil on canvas c1925 Advertisements for Norine fashion: |
1925 "Petrouchka" |
1925 "Petrouchka" |
"Belle - Inconnue" |
"Adieu New York" |
"Lord Lister" |
"Musette"de norine |
"Arlequinade" |
"La Festa" |
"Nuit sans Fin" |
"Minuit" |
"princesse soleil" |
1927 The Murderous Sky brush and black ink with collage of sheet music cut-outs on wove paper 50.3 x 65.2 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
1927 The Menaced Assassin oil on canvas 150.4 x 195.2 cm MoMA, New York |
1928-29 The Palace of Curtains, III oil on canvas 81.2 x 116.4 cm MoMA, New York |
1928-29 Ceci n'est pad une pipe. (This is not a pipe.) oil on canvas 63.5 x 93.9 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA |
1928 The Reckless Sleeper oil on canvas 116 x 81 cm Tate Gallery, London |
1928 Attempting the Impossible oil on canvas 105.6 x 81 cm |
1928 Man with a Newspaper oil on canvas 115.6 x 81.3 cm Tate Gallery, London |
1929 The False Mirror oil on canvas 54 x 80.9 cm MoMA, New York |
1929 The Lovers oil on canvas 54 x 73.4 cm MoMA, New York |
1929 The Magic Mirror oil on canvas 73 x 54.5 cm National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh |
1929 Threatening Weather oil on canvas 54 x 73 cm National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh |
1930 The Annunciation oil on canvas 113.7 x 145.9 cm Tate Gallery, London |
1931 Voice of Space oil on canvas 72.7 x 54.2 cm Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York) |
1932/35 The Eye oil on canvas 27 x 24.8 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
1933 The Human Condition oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
1934 Collective Invention oil on canvas 73.5 x 97.5 cm Private Collection |
1935 The Portrait oil on canvas 73.3 x 50.2 cm MoMA, New York |
1935 The Human Condition oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm Private Collection |
c1935-6 Untitled gouache on paper 26.6 x 20.6 cm |
1937 On the Threshold of Liberty oil on canvas 94 x 73 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
1937 Not to be Reproduced oil on canvas 81.3 x 65 cm Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands |
1937 In Praise of Dialectics:
With their strange juxtapositions and memorable images, the paintings of René Magritte are based on the conviction that depictions of mental ideas are as valid as the recording of external events. Few artists have given us so many clear depictions of the life of the inner self. In making the familiar so unfamiliar, Magritte reminds us of life as lived in the mind.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
1937 In Praise of Dialectics oil on canvas 65.5 x 54 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
1937 The Spirit of Geometry gouache on paper 37.5 x 29.2 cm Tate Gallery, London |
1937 The Future of Statues:
Plaster reproductions of Napoleaon’s death-mask were stocked by Liaison Berger, the artists’ materials shop belonging to Georgette Magritte’s sister, Léontyne Hoyer Berger. Magritte is known to have painted five of these casts with sky and clouds, at four of which are extant. The first of these casts dates, in the opinion of the compilers of the Catalogue Raisonné, from c1931.
Tate Gallery, London
1937 The Future of Statues oil on plaster 33 x 16.5 x 20.3 cm Tate Gallery, London |
The Future of Statues Tate Gallery, London |
The Future of Statues Tate Gallery, London |
1937 The Black Flag:
The Black Flag may refer to the German bombing of the small Spanish town of Guernica in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Magritte later wrote that the picture “gave a foretaste of the terror which would come from flying machines, and I am not proud of it.” In contrast to artists who praised technology, Magritte was showing the Machines have their darker side, looking closely at the planes, one can see that they are made of a variety of strange shapes. The plane on the bottom right has a long, curtained window where its wings should be.
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
1937 The Black Flag oil on canvas 54.2 x 73.7 cm National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh |
1937 The White Race:
This painting belongs to a series of four works by René Magritte, all titled The White Race. In each he composed sculpturesque figures from isolated body parts and facial features, disrupting how bodies are usually seen. By deconstructing and reassembling human appendages, the artist defamiliarised something so ubiquitous as to be easily overlooked—the female nude, so often white in Western art—to challenge conventional understandings of bodily forms.
Typically, Magritte’s titles are not descriptive but rather philosophical, raising questions and bringing related ideas to mind poetically. This work’s title suggests a critique of European culture, or what we might now call the social construction of whiteness. In speaking of the painting, however, Magritte focused on the “opportunity… to ask questions of the public; I would ask visitors if they couldn’t tell me why I had given the figure two noses.”
Art Institute of Chicago
1937 The White Race oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
1938 Time Transfixed oil on canvas 97 x 146 cm Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL |
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