René was born in Belgium and in 1922 he married Georgette Berger. In 1925, Magritte painted what he considered to be his first major work, in 1927, he held his first one-man show at the Galérie Le Centaure. He toyed with everyday objects, human habits and emotions, placing them in foreign contexts and questioning their familiar meanings. He rehabilitated the object. He made the commonplace profound and the rational irrational. His work goes beyond escapism and serves to reveal some of the murkier and complex aspects of the human condition.
|
|
 Viewer |
Perspective: Madame Récamier by David 1951 oil on canvas 60.5 x 80.5 cm Purchased 1997 National Gallery of Canada (no. 38432) During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Surrealist painter René Magritte made a series of "Perspective" paintings based on well-known works by the French artists François Gérard, Jacques Louis David, and Édouard Manet, in which he substituted coffins for the figures represented in the original paintings. The composition of this work is almost identical to that of David's famous portrait of Madame Récamier in the Louvre, except that the seductive young sitter has been replaced by a coffin, with a cascading gown left as the only trace of her previous existence. Executed in Magritte's carefully detailed style, this irreverent rendition of the Neoclassical masterpiece is suffused with mordant wit. |
| Time Transfixed | Voice of Space | Human Condition | Lola de Valence | Lovers | Perspective | Personal Values | Son of Man |
| Renowned Artists Gallery index (61 galleries)
Other Parts of the Permanent Gallery | ||
| Digital Color Winners 2004 and 2005
Digital Color Winners 2002 and 2003 Digital Color Winners 1999, 2000 and 2001 |
Watercolor Painters
Oil Painters Pen and Pencil Artists |
Photographers
Sculptors Authors |