Les Amants - René Magritte Collection Figurine - Parastone - 12,5 cm

Les Amants - René Magritte Collection Figurine - Parastone - 12,5 cm.

Although their faces are covered by a veil, the lovers kiss passionately. The strangeness this creates is typical of Magritte’s work. Behind the visible – the kiss – hides the invisible – the emotion expressed by the face behind the veil.

René Magritte (1898-1967) Born in 1898 in Lessines near Tournai, in the French-speaking part of Belgium. He grew up in Châtelet near Charleroi. From 1916 to 1918, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. There he met the brothers Victor and Pierre Bourgeois and the painter Pierre-Louis Flouquet. In 1919, Magritte contributed to the first issue of the magazine Au Volant, published by the Bourgeois brothers. After a year of military service, Magritte worked as a designer, mainly for a wallpaper manufacturer in Brussels, and as a freelance designer of posters, advertising materials, and exhibition stands. He painted his first recognized surrealist work, Le Jockey Perdu, in 1926. In the same year, he signed the pamphlets Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel and Deux Disgrâces, together with other Belgian surrealists. Magritte lived in Le Perreux-sur-Marne near Paris from 1927 to 1930, where he met Hans Arp, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, and Joan Miró. In 1929, his provocative article Les Mots et les Images was published in the last issue of La Révolution Surréaliste, a year after he had painted Le Masque Vide.