René Magritte: Biography Of This Peculiar Surrealist Painter
In The betrayal of images, a work executed in 1928, the painter René Magritte (1898-1967) presented the viewer with a huge pipe. The painting did not contain anything else, only the image of the object and a legend that read: Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). With this painting, Magritte showed off his “magical realism” (closely connected to surrealism, but, at the same time, very different from it) and challenged the public to establish a new connection with reality.
Because Magritte was right and, at the same time, he was wrong. Certainly, what was represented in the painting was a pipe. But no less true was that it was not a real pipe, since with that paint you could not smoke or do anything that could be done with a real pipe. The paradox, the game, the deception, were served.
If you found this anecdote interesting, keep reading. Here you will find a biography of the Belgian painter René Magritte one of the most important artists of “magical realism”:
Brief biography of René Magritte, the surrealist who did not want to be one
And, although many art books continue to include him in the group of surrealists, in reality Magritte never considered himself as such, or not exactly. It is true that, during his Parisian period, he shared ideas with André Breton and his colleagues, but later he decidedly distanced himself from them and configured a very personal universe that, in fact, he had never abandoned. Because René Magritte was a totally independent artist, who did not like to be linked to a movement and who wanted to follow his own path on the path of art.
As often happens, a tragedy in childhood
There are many artists who are marked by a painful event that occurred in their childhood. Magritte is no less. And it is that His mother, Regina Berthinchamps, committed suicide when he was only thirteen years old It was not the first time that the woman tried to take her life; In fact, his father, Léopold Magritte, was forced to lock his wife at home so that she would desist from pursuing him. That March 12, 1912, Regina escaped and jumped into the icy waters of the Sambre. They say that René himself witnessed the recovery of her body, which was floating ghostly in the river, with her face hidden by the folds of her dress.
Much has been said about the harmful influence that this memory had on the work of the adult Magritte. It was commented that one of his best-known paintings, Loversexecuted in 1928 and showing a man and a woman kissing with their faces completely covered by what appears to be a sack, was directly “inspired” by the tragic event. However, the same painter denied this relationship. Who knows.
Juxtaposed objects, desolate spaces
In 1910, young René studied drawing and later received painting classes at an academy in Chatelet. It will not be until 1916, at the age of eighteen, that he will enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he will receive the most careful pictorial education from him. In these youthful years, Magritte’s early works are completely influenced by late impressionism In 1920, an art center in Brussels exhibited some of these works, along with those of Pierre-Louis Flouquet, who was also his studio companion.
But it will be 1922 when Magritte’s life changes forever, both professionally and sentimentally. That year he married Georgette Berger (1901-1986), an old friend of his, who would be his faithful companion until death and the model for many of his paintings. On the other hand, that same year he saw for the first time the work of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978); specifically, his painting The love song, and is deeply impressed by the strange and unreal atmosphere of the work. Such is his obsession with the work of the Greek artist that, starting in 1926, Magritte created his works, inspired by his style.
What is this new style that so fascinates our character? Chirico’s work juxtaposes elements that, apparently, have no relationship with each other, and immerses them in desert, desolate, almost suffocating landscapes. Silence hovers throughout the Greek’s work, a silence that buzzes in the ears like a beehive. It is then that Magritte considers the relationship between reality and art; Consequently, a new style will emerge, the so-called “magical realism.” of which the Belgian will be one of the main architects.
Is Magritte surrealist?
We have already commented in the introduction how our artist approaches the French surrealists, but, even so, it does not quite fit with their ideas. In 1928, Magritte found himself in Perreux-sur-Marne, a town near Paris. There he came into contact with André Breton and the other surrealists of the French capital and, for a time, exhibited with them in different galleries. However, and despite the fact that his work is undoubtedly impregnated with a certain surrealism, the artist will always be an independent painter.
In fact, and together with other Belgian artists, Magritte signed a manifesto in the 1940s where he questioned the guidelines of the “orthodox” surrealism of the Paris group; It is about the famous Surrealism in full sunlightwhich gives us an idea, then, of the distance between the French and Belgian surrealists once the war was over.
We therefore ask ourselves a question: was Magritte a surrealist? In many ways, of course he was. This artist’s work is built through paradoxes and contradictions, in a perpetual, often disturbing, game with the viewer. Salvador Dalí devised something similar with his paranoid-critical method: confusing the public through completely misleading images.
However, unlike other surrealists, Magritte does not base his work entirely on dreams. The Belgian painter was not interested in the automatism of Breton and the others, but rather in the surrounding reality and the meaning it acquires for the viewer. Thus, in many of Magritte’s paintings (The key to dreams, The empire of lights, Euclid’s walks) the artist challenges the audience and urges them, almost sarcastically, to establish new connections. Magritte’s intention is to explore human perception, in all its facets and in all its limits (if there are any): paintings that are not paintings, but windows to the outside; bright days with blue skies where, however, dark houses appear, with the only illumination from a solitary street lamp; deceptions, illusions, trompe l’oeil, riddles. That is, in essence, the work of René Magritte.
Paradoxically (it could not be otherwise, considering his work) the life of this artist so given to the mysterious was completely trivial. Happily married from a very young age, in 1930 he decided to return to Belgium, where he would spend a placid and almost bourgeois existence in Brussels, the city that saw him die, due to an aggressive cancer, in 1967. Nothing bohemian, nothing twisted, nothing “typical.” ” from the world of artists.
What is truly exciting about the man is found in his work In his canvases, Magritte presents everyday objects (which he repeats over and over again: the tree, the dove, the easel, the famous man in the bowler hat…), but, by capturing them on canvas, he alters their meaning. The knife is no longer a knife, but a “bird”; the leaf, the sky, and the briefcase, a table. Only the sponge maintains its original meaning, and the artist writes, under the representation of it, the related word: “L’éponge”.
The worlds that René Magritte proposes are, as the name of his style clearly indicates, magical worlds. Nothing there is what it really seems. The viewer is torn, in this way, from a reality that he controls, and is forcibly introduced into unknown places. Perhaps this is the great paradox of Magritte’s life: to have lived such a placid and serene existence and to have painted such sweetly disturbing paintings.
