| Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (1898—1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He was popular as the author of witty, and at the same time, poetically mysterious images.
Biography:
Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 in the small town of Lessines, in Belgium. He spent his childhood and youth in the small industrial city of “Charleroi” where life was rather difficult.
In 1912, his mother drowned in the River Sambre, which probably rendered a huge impression on the then teenager and future artist, however, contrary to the stereotyped view, it is not necessary to overestimate its influence on the creativity of the author. Magritte has taken out a number of other memoirs from his childhood, not so tragic, but no less mysterious memoirs about which he said that they found reflection in his creations (lecture of 1938).
For two years, Magritte attended the Royal Academy of Fine arts in Brussels, which he left in 1918. During this period, he met Georgette Berger, whom he married in 1922 and with whom he lived till his death in 1967.
Magritte worked as a poster and advertisement designer in a wallpaper factory till 1926, when the contract with Brussels Galerie la Centaure allowed the artist to fully devote himself to painting.
In 1926, Magritte created a surrealistic painting “The Lost Jockey”, which he considered it as the first successful painting of such type. In 1927, he held his first exhibition. Critics considered the exhibition a failure and Magritte along with Georgette left for Paris, where he meets Andre Breton and becomes a member of the surrealist group. In this group, Magritte did not lose his individuality but the involvement in the surrealist group helped Magritte to find a proprietary original style, through which his images are identified. The artist was not afraid to argue with other surrealists: for example, Magritte treated psychoanalysis negatively and especially to its occurrence in art. Really, the nature of his creativity was not so much psychological but rather philosophically-poetic and even intellectual.
After the expiry of the contract with Galerie la Centaure, Magritte returned back to Brussels and again worked with advertising, and then together with his brother, he opened an agency, which fetched him a regular income. During the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Magritte changed the color gamut and stylistics of his paintings, coming closer to Renoir's stylistics: the artist considered that it is important to encourage people and to give a ray of hope to them.
However, after the war, Magritte stopped painting in such a “solar” style and returns back to his pre-war paintings. Refining and improving them, he finally creates his strange style and achieves huge recognition.
Magritte died of pancreas cancer on August 15, 1967, having left an un-added new variant, probably, his most popular painting the “light Empire.
Philosophy and style:
Isolated, as if imperturbable styles, is the characteristic for Magritte's paintings. Usual subjects are painted by Magritte, which unlike other major surrealists (Salvador Dali, Ernest), never lost their “Objective”: they do not spread and do not turn into their own shades. However, the strange combination of these subjects amazes and makes people stand up and think. And, the calmness of the style only aggravates this surprise and immerses the spectator in a certain poetic catalepsy, caused by most secret things.
The aim of Magritte, according to his own confession, is to make the audience think. Due to this, paintings by the artist often are like puzzles, but it is impossible to completely solve the puzzles, as they raise the questions on the essence of life: Magritte always speaks about the delusiveness of the visible, about its concealed mystery, which we usually do not notice. The working style of the artist is popular, in which he writes “It is not that” below the usual subjects. The pipe with signature “That’s not a pipe” is especially popular. Thus, Magritte once again reminds the audience that the image of the subject - not subject itself is important.
In general, the names of Magritte’s paintings play a special role. They are always poetic and always in any way not related to the painting at first sight. And, in it, the artist saw their importance: he considered that the hidden poetic message of the name and painting further promotes the magical surprise, which Magritte viewed by designation of art.
The struggle is for this magic, the struggle against deceptive self-evidence of the ordinary person he has created, for example, such characteristic creativity image of the artist, as the man in mess-tin. Placing this, apparently, quintessence of depersonalized ordinary in different strange situations (“Golconda”, “Le mois des vandages”, “The Mysteries of the Horizon”), the artist sets up the simplicity of this image and the simplicity of the most visible ordinary under question.
In his creativity, the artist tried to solve the perception problem of the real world, interpret difference or identity between the image and actuality. Therefore, Magritte quite often used images in paintings such as mirrors, windows, eyes etc. |
This Friday the artistic world is cerebrating the 110th birthday of Rene Magritte - Belgian surrealist artist. His surreal works are not only visually impressive, but often thought-provoking. His series of paintings titled "The Treachery of Images" shows the realistically drawn objects captioned "Ceci n'est pas..." (French for "This is not..."). His famous image of a pipe is captioned "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). As Magritte himself commented: "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!"
Rene started his career as a designer at a wallpaper factory, and later was a poster and advertisement designer. His first personal exhibition in Brussels in 1921 got horrible critics reviews. Real fame came to Magritte in 1960 (shortly before his death in 1967) when his paintings influenced pop art and culture.
