Since 1989, when the March Foundation dedicated an exhibition entirely dedicated to the Belgian painter’s career, an event of the same type had not been held again. The Museo Thyssen houses the return of the painter with an exhibition in operation from 14 September to 30 January 2022: The Magritte Machine. Its curator, Guillermo Solana, has included different elements -photogaphies and videos- in addition to the more than 90 paintings belonging to the artist in an effort to articulate the exhibition with the environment that surrounds it. It consists of seven sections: The Magician’s Powers, Images and Words, Figures and Background, The Picture and the Window, The Face and the Mask, Mimicry and finally, Megalomania.

René Magritte (1898-1967) is one of the greatest exponents of surrealism, and not for his attachment or assimilation to other painters of the same current as Breton, but for his own style and formulation of the paintings, full of common elements -duplications, absences, Characters with the same attire that reveal part of the automatism with which the painter defined himself. Dramatism and emotions are simplified into a simpler and more traditional work, which seeks to bring the mechanization of other fields to that of art. It was during the 1920s when he made some of his best-known pieces, such as Los Amantes (1928).

After his stay in Paris he returned to Brussels, highlighting the Époque vache, in which experimentation reigned with bad reception by the public, and his subsequent return to his old style.

Food of First Need.

Text: Beatriz Igea Sanchez.

Photos: René Magritte/Thyssen Museum.

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