René Magritte (1898-1967), after - Homesickness

René Magritte - Homesickness - Offset printing/poster print - 70 x 50 cm

Name: René Magritte
Title: Homesickness
Type: Original art poster - High-quality offset print/poster print based on the original work from 1941
Publisher: KMSKB - Magritte Foundation - Standaard Uitgeverij
Style: Modern - Surrealism

Characteristics:
- Perfect condition: A+
- 70 x 50 cm
- Signed in print
- Based on Magritte's original work from 1941

EXTRA INFO ABOUT THE ARTIST:
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 produced many posters.

Magritte's debut in painting was in a cubist, futurist, and abstract vein, under the influence of his boss Victor Servranckx at the wallpaper factory UPL (Les Usines Peters-Lacroix, in Machelen). After encountering Giorgio de Chirico's work in 1925, Magritte began to assimilate surrealist elements into his work. De Chirico depicts objects with extreme realism, but in totally different causal and temporal contexts. Thus De Chirico emphasizes the enigmatic nature of the world of objects. The conventional order and placement of things are likewise ridiculed in this way.

Magritte mainly created paintings (oil on canvas), but also gouaches, objects, and collages.

Under the guidance 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 lived in a suburb of Paris, where his surrealist vision was crowned by the friendship of Paul Éluard and André Breton, who had written The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. When Breton once insisted that Magritte's wife remove a cross necklace, he decided to return to Brussels.[1]

When in 1930 the Gallery Le Centaure, where Magritte was under contract, went bankrupt, E.L.T. Mesens could buy all his works, at that time about 200.

In 1934 Magritte and his entourage applied the technique of the cadaverous exquisite with images following 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 Archivette of Leuven houses seven posters designed by Magritte.

During World War II Magritte worked and resided in the French town of Carcassonne. He forged art to make ends meet, mainly works by De Chirico, Picasso and Braque.[1] For a short period, between 1940 and 1946, Magritte enriched his palette with a slight impressionistic emphasis (the so-called 'Renoir period') on the advice of his agent. This style tended to sell better.

In 1945, after returning to Belgium, he joined the Communist Party of Belgium. In 1948 he briefly painted in a cartoonish style, but also without success.[1] But soon he returned to his earlier, almost photorealistic style, somewhat more aggressive due to his now quarrelsome relationship with his former surrealist circle (Goemans, Scutenaire, Nougé, Lecomte, Souris, E.L.T. Mesens). Magritte's black humor often led to morbid figuration, further surrealized by sometimes impossibly plausible titles he gave his works.

In 1953 Magritte created 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. He was awarded the Belgian State Prize in 1960 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 strong presence today of Magritte's works 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, stylistically, belongs to surrealism, one of the major art movements of the 20th century. In many of his works, nude women and realistically painted fish appear. This is probably a reference to the fact that Magritte found his mother nude in the Meuse after she had committed suicide.

Magritte's work, like that of Salvador Dalí and Carel Willink, is very finely painted, which emphasizes the realistic effect of apparently impossible representations.

The best-known Magritte work is undoubtedly La Trahison des Images (1928-29) or "The Treachery of Images" with the painted text: Ceci n'est pas une pipe under the highly realistic image of a pipe. In this work, René Magritte paints a pipe with the caption underneath: 'This is not a pipe' (Ceci n'est pas une pipe). He wants to remind himself and the viewer that this is a painting, painted on canvas with oil paint, not a real pipe. Any reference to a real pipe betrays the fact that a pipe is essentially an idea and thus originates in the mind.

By constantly questioning and essentially deceiving us, Magritte forces 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, reducing 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 that it is the painter's task to place reality in a different framework. His art always raises more questions than it can answer. An example is the painting of a mermaid, depicted with a fish head and human legs. Also notable is the painting of a very realistically depicted fish that, at the tail end, becomes a burning cigar with curling smoke (painting "l'Exception" 1963). Magritte's work also demonstrates 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 into another. Or the work is impossible in other respects, for example the series of houses at night, with a clear sky above in daylight. Or a moon hanging in front of a tree leaves. Owls or other birds emerging from the ground as 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