Treachery of Images
René François Ghislain Magritte was born in Belgium in 1898 to a tailor and a milliner. His first paintings, from around 1915, were Impressionistic. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels between 1916 and 1918 but felt uninspired. His works from 1918 to 1924 were influenced by Futurism and Cubism. In 1922, Magritte was shown a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love and was moved to tears. This influenced him heavily, as well as the paintings of William Degouve de Nuncques. In 1926, a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time, and that year he created his first Surrealist painting, The Lost Jockey.
Magritte, depressed by failure at his first solo exhibition in 1927 where critics hurled abuse, moved to Paris and became friends with André Breton, and immersed himself in the Surrealist scene. He was a key figure in the movement, and in 1929, he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy. In 1930 Magritte returned to Brussels, and in the following years he would have exhibitions in New York and London. Over the years his work rose in popularity, notably in the 1960s. He died in 1968 of pancreatic cancer at age 68. Today, Magritte is considered to be amongst the greatest Belgian artists in history.
