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All auctions / Arts & Graphics / René Magritte - KMSKB - Magritte Foundation - Standaard...
René Magritte - Black Magic (after) - Offset print/poster print - 70 x 50 cm Name: René Magritte Title: Black Magic / Black Magic (1945) Pattern/Type: Original art poster - High-quality offset print/poster print after the original work from 1945 Publisher: KMSKB - Magritte Foundation - Standaard Uitgeverij Style: Modern - Surrealism Characteristics: - Perfect condition: A+ - 70 x 50 cm - Signed in print - Based on the original work by Magritte from 1945 EXTRA ARTIST INFO: René François Ghislain Magritte (Lessen, 21 November 1898 – Schaerbeek, 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist painter. René Magritte initially worked as a designer at a wallpaper factory and later also created many posters. Magritte’s debut in painting was Cubist, Futurist and abstract work, under the influence of his supervisor Victor Servranckx at the wallpaper factory UPL (les Usines Peters-Lacroix, in Machelen). After being introduced to Giorgio de Chirico’s work in 1925, Magritte began to assimilate surrealist elements. De Chirico depicts objects in a very realistic manner, but in entirely different causal and temporal contexts. Thus he emphasizes the mystery of the object world. Also, the conventional order and placement of things is ironized in this way. Magritte mainly made paintings (oil on canvas), but also gouaches, objects and collages. Under the leadership of E.L.T. Mesens, he contributed to the magazine Oesophage and in 1927 had his first solo exhibition at the gallery "Le Centaure" in Brussels. Between 1927 and 1930 Magritte stayed in a suburb of Paris, where his surrealist vision was crowned by the friendship of Paul Éluard and André Breton, who had already written The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. When Breton once insisted that Magritte’s wife remove a necklace with a cross, he decided to return to Brussels.[1] When in 1930 the "Galerie Le Centaure", where Magritte was under contract, went bankrupt, E.L.T. Mesens could purchase all his works, at that time about 200. In 1934 Magritte and his entourage applied the cadavre exquis technique also to images following the language experiments in which a poem is written by multiple poets. Between 1934 and 1937 Magritte signed film posters for the German sound-film distributor Tobis Klangfilm under the pseudonym 'Emair'. The City Archive of Leuven preserves seven posters designed by Magritte. During World War II Magritte worked and lived in the French town of Carcassonne. He forged art to support himself, mainly for works by De Chirico, Picasso and Braque.[1] For a short period, between 1940 and 1946, Magritte slightly enriched his palette with an impressionistic accent (the so-called 'Renoir period') on the advice of his agent. This style sold better. In 1945, after his return to Belgium, he joined the Communist Party of Belgium. In 1948 he briefly painted in a comic-like style, but also without success.[1] But soon he returned to his earlier, almost photorealistic style, somewhat more aggressive due to the turbulent relationship with his former surrealist circle (Goemans, Scutenaire, Nougé, Lecomte, Souris, E.L.T. Mesens). Magritte’s dark humor often led him to morbid figuration, further surrealized by the sometimes impossibly unlikely titles he gave his works. In 1953 Magritte created the wall paintings in the Casino of Knokke on the Belgian coast, commissioned by the Nellens family. These are now protected by the Royal Commission for Monuments and Landscapes. In 1960 he was awarded the Belgian State Prize for all his work. It was the first time the State Prize was awarded to a painter. In the 1950s Magritte’s work was very popular with New York collectors. This explains the large presence today of Magritte’s work in American collections. His most famous icon La Trahison des Images is also there. Magritte died in 1967 in Schaerbeek from pancreatic cancer, where he is also buried in the municipal cemetery. Most of Magritte’s oeuvre, in terms of style, belongs to surrealism, one of the major art movements of the 20th century. In many of his works there are naked women and accurately rendered fish. This is probably a reference to the fact that Magritte found his mother naked in the Sambre after she had committed suicide. Magritte’s work, like that of Salvador Dalí and Carel Willink, is painted very finely, which emphasizes the realistic effect of images that do not exist in reality. The best-known work by Magritte is without a doubt La Trahison des Images (1928-29) or "The Treachery of Images" with the painted text: Ceci n’est pas une pipe under the very realistic image of a pipe. In this work, René Magritte paints a pipe with the message below: "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n’est pas une pipe). He wants to remind himself and the viewer that this is a painting, i.e., a canvas painted with oil, and not a real pipe. Any reference to a real pipe betrays the fact that a pipe is essentially an idea rooted in the mind. By continually questioning ourselves and, as it were, misleading ourselves, Magritte compels us to think about art. In that light, the titles of Magritte’s works can also be understood. These titles usually have nothing to do with the subject of the painting. Later conceptual artists took this line to the extreme with installations, performances, or happenings and reduced the artwork to an idea. This is also a critique of artists who believe they must depict reality as truthfully as possible, such as the hyperrealists later. René Magritte believed it was the painter’s task to place reality in another frame. His art always raises more questions than it can answer. This is evident from the painting of a mermaid depicted with a fish head and human legs. A stroke of this is the painting of a very realistically depicted fish that at the tail end changes into a burning cigar with curling smoke (painting "l’Exception" 1963). Magritte’s work also shows an extremely high mastery of the technique of painting with oil on canvas. Much of Magritte’s work shows metamorphosis, a change from one object to another. Or the work is otherwise impossible, for example the series of houses at night, with a bright sky above in daylight. Or a moon hanging in front of the leaves of a tree. Owls or other birds emerging from the ground like plants. He is related to the following artists: Morris Louis Yves Klein Lucio Fontana Piet Mondrian Niki de Saint Phalle Otto Piene Heinz Mack Kazimir Malevich Jean Tinguely Rainer Maria Latzke Jef Verheyen Pol Bury Walter Leblanc Rene Magritte André Racz Pierre Alechinsky Victor Vasarely Georges Vantongerloo Yves Klein Otto Piene Heinz Mack Lucio Fontana Piero Manzoni Jesús Rafael Soto Victor Vasarely Karl Otto Götz Gerhard Richter Anselm Kiefer Georg Baselitz Jannis Kounellis Cy Twombly Antoni Tàpies Hans Hartung Pierre Soulages Mark Rothko Kazuo Shiraga Bridget Riley Agostino Bonalumi Jean Tinguely Niki de Saint Phalle Guy Vandenbranden Marcel Duchamp Joseph Beuys Jean Tinguely Alexander Calder Nam June Paik Claes Oldenburg Chris Burden Richard Buckminster Fuller Karel Appel Asger Jorn Constant Nieuwenhuys Corneille Jean Dubuffet Jackson Pollock Willem de Kooning Hans Hartung Joan Miró Antoni Tàpies Sam Francis Franz Kline Mark Tobey André Masson Lucio Fontana Eduardo Chillida Kazuo Shiraga Zao Wou-Ki
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