A fish with a woman’s legs. A train emerging from a fireplace. An umbrella with a glass of water sitting atop it. I, like other surrealistic painters of the early 1900s, am known for my paintings of objects placed out of their usual context. But unlike most other surrealistic painters, I insists that my paintings have no meaning. In fact, for me, the whole point is to show that images themselves conceal nothing and as mere images, they mean nothing.
I was born in Hainaut, Belgium in 1898, the son of a struggling tailor. Due to the unstable nature of the business, my family moved often and in 1910, I found himself in Chatelet where I began to study sketching. My mother was unhappy during my childhood and attempted suicide a number of times In 1912, when I was 14 my mother left the house and drowned herself in the river. When her body was pulled from the river many days later her face was covered by her night dress. (Young Magritte saw the corpse bare with the face wrapped, and this image disturbing and erotic was left in his memory.He made many paintings about death by drowning and tragedy in water, as well as disturbing images of faces draped in a cloth.)
At the age 18, I received permission from my father to study at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. There, I met painters, poets and philosophers and exhibited my work for the first time. I remained at the academy for two years. In 1922, at the age of 24, I married Georgette Berger and supported her by working as a commercial artist. But within a few years, I began to devote myself to serious painting once again and by 1927, I moved to Paris to join other Surrealists working there. Despite my association with Surrealists and their influence upon my work, I despised the means they often used to inspire themselves such as drugs, dreams and even magic. Nevertheless, I gained some recognition through their movement. With the advent of a recession in Paris, I was forced to move to Brussels in 1930 and turn to commercial work to pay the bills. Luckily, I was able to get through these difficult times with the support of friends and patrons and began to establish my reputation abroad. By 1947, I had become quite successful in the United States. In 1965, a retrospective of my work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Throughout my artistic career, I deviated from my style twice, but dissatisfied with the results, I returned to my original style. My interest in language inspired me to sometimes add words to my paintings, challenging the symbolism of the word as a representation of an object.
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