René Magritte
"L Entree en scene (The Emergence), " Color Lithograph after Rene Magritte
2011

Name: "L'Entree en scene (The Emergence), " Color Lithograph after Rene Magritte
Brand: René Magritte
Rating: 4.9 (64 reviews)

$5,075List Price

About the Item

"L'Entree en scene (The Emergence)" is a color lithograph after a 1961 original piece by Rene Magritte. A transparent bird flies over the ocean. The body of this bird shows through it a clean light sky with fluffy clouds. The view around the bird is instead the dark night, stars shine at the top of the scene. Clouds blow by and the waves are turbulent. Art: 20.25 x 14.25 in Frame: 31.38 x 25.38 in René-François-Ghislain Magritte was born November 21, 1898, in Lessines, Belgium and died on August 15, 1967 in Brussels. He is one of the most important surrealist artists. Through his art, Magritte creates humor and mystery with juxtapositions and shocking irregularities. Some of his hallmark motifs include the bourgeois “little man,” bowler hats, apples, hidden faces, and contradictory texts. René Magritte’s father was a tailor and his mother was a miller. Tragedy struck Magritte’s life when his mother committed suicide when he was only fourteen. Magritte and his two brothers were thereafter raised by their grandmother. Magritte studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1918. After graduating he worked as a wallpaper designer and in advertisement. It was during this period that he married Georgette Berger, whom he had known since they were teenagers. In 1926, René Magritte signed a contract with the Brussels Art Gallery, which allowed him to quit his other jobs and focus completely on creating art. A year later he had his first solo show at the Galerie la Centaurie in Brussels. At this show Magritte exhibited what is today thought of as his first surrealist piece, The Lost Jockey, painted in 1926. In this work a jockey and his steed run across a theater stage, curtains parted on either side. Throughout the scene, there are trees with trunks shaped somewhat like chess pawns with musical scores running vertically up their sides and branches sticking out from all angles. Critics did not enjoy this style of art; it was new, different, and took critical thought to understand, but The Lost Jockey was only the first of many surrealist artworks Magritte would paint. Because of the bad press in Brussels, René and Georgette moved to Paris in 1927, with the hope that this center of avant-garde art would bring him success and recognition. In Paris, he was able to become friends with many other surrealists, including André Breton and Paul Éluard. They were able to learn from and inspire one another, pushing the Surrealist movement further forward. It was also in Paris that Magritte decided to add text to some of his pieces, which was one of the elements that made his artwork stand out. In 1929, he painted one of his most famous oil works: The Treachery of Images. This is the eye-catching piece centered on a pipe. Below the pipe is written “Ceci n’est pas un pipe,” which translates to “This is not a pipe.” This simple sentence upset many critics of the time, for of course it was a pipe. Magritte replied that it was not a pipe, but a representation of a pipe. One could not use this oil on canvas as a pipe, to fill it with tobacco and smoke it. Thus, it was not a pipe. In 1930, Magritte and Georgette moved back to Brussels. Though they would travel to his exhibitions elsewhere, their home going forward would always be in Brussels. Magritte had his first American exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1936 and his first show in England two years later in 1938 at The London Gallery. These shows helped propel his international fame. Today René Magritte has two museums dedicated to his life and art, both in his home city of Brussels. The first of these is the René Magritte Museum, which is established in the home he and Georgette shared. This museum is biographical in nature and uses his life as a frame through which to understand his art. The other museum is The Magritte Museum, which is a part of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. This museum has over two-hundred and fifty of his works and is centered on his artistic expression. Artworks entirely made in France: from the production of the paper in Arches in the Vosges department, to the traditional lithographic printing process, one drawing for each different color, one color per press run. The lithographs were authorized, supervised and validated by the ADAGP (Society of Authors in the Graphic and Plastic Arts) and by Mr. Charly Herscovici, President of the Magritte Foundation, Chairman of the Magritte Museum and unique representative of the Magritte Succession. Each lithograph features the dry stamps of the Magritte Foundation ADAGP and is countersigned in pencil by Mr. Charly Herscovici. A proof of edition is printed on the back of each lithograph, guaranteeing its authenticity.

Creator:
René Magritte (1898-1967, Belgian)
Creation Year:
2011
Dimensions:
Height: 31.38 in (79.71 cm)Width: 25.38 in (64.47 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Movement Style:
Surrealist
Period:
2010-
Framing:
Frame Included
Framing Options Available
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Milwaukee, WI
Reference Number:
Seller: 14031g1stDibs: LU605312120222

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René Magritte

René Magritte is celebrated today as one of Surrealism’s most talented artists, and, alongside Salvador Dalí, the cheeky, subversive Belgian painter and author is the movement’s best-known representative, having cemented his legacy with what may be the most iconic five words in all of art history: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe).

Magritte’s success, though, hardly came overnight. Born in 1898 in Lessines to a wealthy manufacturer, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918 but quit before graduation. His early artistic work wavered between Cubism and semi-abstraction, and he found work as a graphic designer while experimenting with his own creative oeuvre. In the mid-1920s, he began to experiment with Surrealism, then a relatively nascent movement that had grown out of the absurdist Dada. Led by André Breton, Surrealism endeavored to record elements of the subconscious and present contradictory, sometimes even nonsensical, narratives that challenged the notion of an absolute reality.

Magritte’s first widely recognized work within this genre was 1927’s The Menaced Assassin, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Shortly after completing this work, Magritte relocated to Paris, to be closer to Breton and the center of the Surrealist movement. This decision would prove critical in his life — and in the trajectory of Surrealist art history. The three years Magritte spent in Paris were his most prolific, and by the close of the 1920s he had completed some of his best-known work, including the seminal 1929 The Treachery of Images, a simple picture of what appears to be a pipe, with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” in neat script below it.

Magritte returned to Brussels in the early 1930s but continued experimenting with work that wavered between dreamlike and nonsensical. His influences throughout this part of his career ranged from Breton to Giorgio de Chirico and Dalí. While living in German-occupied Belgium beginning in the early 1940s, Magritte entered what is often called his Renoir period or what he labeled “Sunlit Surrealism.” He worked in comparatively brighter, more vibrant colors and produced oil paintings and gouaches that were overrun with light and the type of brushstrokes that are usually associated with Impressionist art.

Like many artists during and after the war, Magritte thought deeply about art’s role in answering big existential questions and broke with Surrealism as a result. His Impressionistic The Fifth Season in 1943 resembled little of what he’d painted in years past. His so-called Vache period that followed would represent another stylistic shift that owed to German Expressionism. Not everything changed, however; Magritte would go on to revisit his earliest creative impulses, in some cases appropriating elements from fellow artists in his own depictions, as with his Perspective II: Manet’s Balcony in 1950, a playful and probing reinterpretation of Edouard Manet’s The Balcony. Later in his career, the artist dabbled in sculpture, before dying in 1967.

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