The Belgian artist Rene Magritte, who became famous for his witty, full of mysteries, surrealistic paintings, never explained the meaning of his paintings, and he did not parade himself, hiding behind the faceless mask of an average person. Researchers of his work and the authors of his biographies agree on one thing - both the artist's paintings and the artist himself still remain a mystery to us.
Childhood
Rene Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 in the small Belgian town of Lessines. He was the eldest of three sons, and his father worked as a traveling salesman. The family was ordinary, unremarkable. By the way, the same can be said about Magritte's life as a whole, which more than once puzzled biographers. Why are there so many strange, poetic, frightening images in the artist's work?
However, when Magritte was fourteen, a tragedy occurred in his life that left an imprint on both his personality and his paintings. On the night of March 12, 1912, Regina Magritte left the house in her nightgown and disappeared. A few days later, her body was found in the Sambre River, with the hem of her shirt coiled around her head. Researchers of the artist's work believe that it is for this reason that the faces of people in some paintings are covered with cloth. One cannot but recall the famous “reverse mermaids” with fish heads and women's legs. Be that as it may, the artist himself denied that the mysterious death of his mother had any special influence on him. “In my childhood there were enough other events that influenced me,” he argued, however, what those events were, he never told. Moreover, even the artist's wife for a long time did not know anything about how his mother died.
Creation
After studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, Magritte took a job as a wallpaper designer and advertising artist. The artist's early works, executed in the style of cubism and futurism, belong to the same period. In 1926, Magritte creates his first surreal painting "The Lost Jockey". A year later, he moved to Paris, where he met the unofficial leader of French surrealism, André Breton, and arranged his first exhibition. In the "Parisian" years (1927-1930) Magritte finally formed his artistic vision, as it remained almost unchanged until the end of his life. It was during these years in the artist's work that that unlikely, strange, full of secret meanings began to appear in the artist's work, which made him famous. The artist himself, by the way, said that his work has nothing to do with surrealism, calling his style "magical realism."
Magritte always wanted the viewer, looking at his paintings, to think. All his work consists of tricks, tricks, illusions, reincarnations, appearances, substitutions, secret meanings. Magritte tells us about the deceitfulness of all that exists, which we usually do not notice, about the illusory nature of being. So, for example, in the painting "The Treachery of Images" there is a smoking pipe, and below it is the signature "This is not a pipe."
Often in his paintings you can see a man in a bowler hat and without a face. Sometimes he turns his back on the audience, which makes him even more of a mystery. Many believe that this mysterious Mr. Nobody is a self-portrait of the artist.
Magicians usually hide their real faces from the public, so Magritte led a completely inconspicuous life of a respectable bourgeois. He did not have a workshop, and he painted in the dining room, but so carefully that he never stained the floor with paint. And when the time came, he stopped working to have lunch, although for the artists of that time it was tantamount to an outrage against art.
In the post-war years, full of quiet bourgeois joys, Magritte paints pictures that bring him worldwide fame: "The Son of Man" and "Golconda".
Personal life
At fifteen, Magritte met the butcher's thirteen-year-old daughter, Georgette Berger. Could he then assume that she would become the only model for his paintings and the only love for life? The teenagers often met, and it was during one such walk (through the cemetery) that Rene saw an artist with an easel. This sight fascinated him so much that at that very moment he decided to devote himself entirely to painting.
In 1922, Rene and Georgette got married. After returning from Paris, they settled in a small house in a quiet area of Brussels, where they lived together until Magritte's death in 1967.
