Rene Magritte

Surreal artist Rene Magritte would describe his paintings saying,"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'what does that mean?' it does not mean anything. Because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable."

He was born in 1898, into a wealthy family. His mother committed suicide in 1912, and the family was publicly humiliated. Rene went to go and study in Brussels at the academie des Beaux-Art from 1916-1918. He decided to leave as he saw it was a waste of time. Afterwards all his paintings reflected cubism, introduced by Pablo Picasso which was very popular at the time. He married a women called Georgette in 1922 and took on a number of small jobs which included, painting cabbage roses for a wallpaper company, in order to pay his bills.

Shortly following his marriage, during the early days of his career, Rene Magritte spent his free time creating forms and created a number of pieces, this was when he realized the art form he most enjoyed was surrealism. one of his earliest pieces called The Threatened Assassin was created 1926, which showcased the surrealist style which he had been working on. Another early piece, The lost Jockey which was introduced in 1925, which also showcased this art form. He produced a number of variants of this piece over the course of his career and, changed the format to recreate what the viewer was experiencing.

Rene Magritte had his first one man show in 1927, in Brussels which took place at the Galerie la Centaurie. He was producing nearly one piece of art work each day, which made for an extensive showing, which critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. From this he decided to move to Paris where he met and became close friends with artist Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism. Andre published his famous, "The Surrealist Manifesto", in 1924. In which he based Surrealist theory on a simplistic understanding of the psychoanalysis work of Sigmund Freud. In particular his interpretations of dreams. Rene Magritte became actively involved in the surrealist group from 1927 to 1930, and much of the works were described as cavernous, with many of his paintings showcasing bizarre scenes, with a hint or eroticism.