René MAGRITTE (1898-1967) - La Peine Perdue, lithography, 45x30 cm

René Magritte : (1898-1967) was a belgian painter, born in Lessines, Belgium, in 1898. He attended his first painting courses in Châtelet. His first paintings were impressionnist and date back from 1915. From 1916 until 1918, René Magritte entered the Académie royale des beaux-arts de Bruxelles. While working in the studio of Flouquet, with whom he collaborated on the magazine "Au volant", that he discoverd Cubism and Futurism. In 1920, his work was for the first time exhibited, at the Centre d'art de Bruxelles. The following year, he was hired as a draughtsman in a paper factory. In 1924, he rubbed shoulders with the Dada movement, and was deeply moved by De Chirico's paintings. He then gathered with artists such as Nougé, Goemans, André Souris or Lecomte, and started to shape belgin surrealism. His first surrealist canvas, "The lost Jockey" dates from 1926. His first big surrealist exhibition was organised in 1928, at the galerie L'époque. Magritte exhibited in New York or in London, and made the cover of a book by André Breton. From 1943 to 1945, he used the impressionnist techniques in his paintings, and coined this period, his "Renoir period". During the 1950's and 1960's, he was commissionned to make works for several public institutions and private buildings. Ill with cancer, René Magritte, died in 1967, in Brussels.