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The first retrospective of René Magritte in Germany for 20 years is now on display

René Magritte is one of the key figures of the 20th century’s art, and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt sheds light on the artwork of the Belgian surre­alist revealing 70 works at the exhibition "MAGRITTE. THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES". On display are paintings from different museums, including iconic images and less famous yet remarkable canvases by the master of paradoxes.
The first retrospective of René Magritte in Germany for 20 years is now on display
Magritte did not see himself as an artist, but rather as a thinking person who conveyed his thoughts through his pictures. Throughout his life he sought to fill his painting with meaning equal to that of language.
The exhibition "Magritte: The Treachery of Images" is split up into 5 sections revealing philosophical investigations done by René Magritte (1898−1967). The Schirn is presenting Magritte’s enigmatic masterpieces from the 1920s to the 1960s, among them his emblematic self- portrait entitled La Lampe philosophique (The Philosopher’s Lamp) (1936), La Condition Humaine (The Human Condition) (1948), Les Mémoires d’un Saint (The Memoires of a Saint) (1960), Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World) (1962), and L’Heureux Donateur (The Happy Donor) (1966).
"During his stay in Paris from 1927 to 1930, Magritte made friends with the French Surrealists assoc





"During his stay in Paris from 1927 to 1930, Magritte made friends with the French Surrealists associated with André Breton. This period gave him the very images that would make Magritte famous in the future. They began to emerge from the darkness, his unique world slowly started to crystallize to be depicted on canvases. Later on, Magritte quarreled with Breton and stopped associating himself with Surrealists, having invented his own "magical realism," more about the life work of the artist read here.



Left: René Magritte, Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World), 1962. Private collection.

Exhibition view. Photo: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt / Norbert Miguletz
Exhibition view. Photo: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt / Norbert Miguletz
Magritte did not accept the system based on dream and automatism postulated by the Parisian associates of André Breton. The unparalleled visual language of the Belgian called for the application of a dialectic method and scientific thinking. The was an expression "the stupidity of painters" near the end of the nineteenth century that was commonly heard. It reflected the philosophical opinion that poetry ranked above painting and words above images. French colleagues of Magritte signed under it, but the artist refuted that premise. Throughout his life, he defended the intellectual dignity of his art and sought to elevate his painting initially to the level of poetry and eventually to that of philosophy.
  • René Magritte, L’Heureux Donateur (The Happy Donor), 1966. Brussels, Musée D’Ixelles.
  • René Magritte, La Colère des Dieux (The Anger of Gods), 1960. Private collection.
Magritte created his own visual vocabulary. His motifs-pipe, apple, melon, candle, curtain, flame, shadow, fragment, and hat, etc-repeatedly occur in various different combinations and contexts in his pictures. The artist viewed his painting as a kind of equation, and ascribed to each work the solution to a "problem" in accordance with a dialectic principle. In La Condition humaine (The Human Condition) (1935), he focused on the problem of the window establishing links between inside and outside, the seen and the hidden, nature and culture, picture and landscape
The development of the genre from antiquity to the present day: how did religion and the invention of oil painting contribute to the development of the genre in Europe, and why was the Hudson River so important? Read more
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Magritte’s first pictures emerged about the time of his move from Brussels to France in 1927. The Schirn is presenting one version of his most famous painting from this series of works, La Trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) (The Treachery of Images [This is not a Pipe]) (1927). The painting shows a pipe scrupulously rendered and beneath it the words inscribed: "This is not a pipe." Magritte demonstrated the confrontation between text and image and thus questioned the validity of perception in general.
In 1929, Magritte’s witty and amusing theoretical treatise entitled Les Mots et les Images (Words and Images) was published in the journal La Révolution Surrealiste (Surrealistic Revolution). With help of 18 pairs of words and images the painter questioned the complex relationships between the object, its name, and its visual representation.
René Magritte. Lucky hand
Lucky hand
1953, 50.5×65 cm
The Surrealist repeatedly turned his attention to ancient myths regarding the invention and essence




The Surrealist repeatedly turned his attention to ancient myths regarding the invention and essence of painting. One of his favorite was the painting competition between Zeuxis und Parrhasius as described by Pliny the Elder. Zeuxis allegedly painted a branch of grapes so realistically that the birds tried to peck it, but Parrazius eventually won the contest by a perfectly painted curtain covering the grapes, that even his opponent took as real.

The motif of the curtain is one of the most frequently recurring motifs in Magritte’s paintings. It bears witness of reflection with which the artist ironized his own ability to create realistic trompe-l'oeil images.




Left: René Magritte, La réponse imprévue (Unexpected Answer), 1933. Magritte Museum, Brussels, Belgium.

Other persistently recurring constants of Magritte are his painted collages, including in particular those of fragmented bodies, as in Les Marches de l'été (The Marches of Summer) (1938). Here he also alludes to ancient legends, contemplating the themes of beauty, reality, and the creative process.
The exhibition "Magritte: The Treachery of Images" features masterpieces from major international museums as well as public and private collections, among them the Musée Magritte in Brussels, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Tate in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The exhibition "Magritte: The Treachery of Images" at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is on display until 5 June 2017.
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Written by Vlad Maslow on materials of the Schirn website. Main illustration: René Magritte, Detail of Variante de la tristesse (Variation of Sorrow), 1957. Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth.