René MagritteThe Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte was a master not only of the obvious, but also of the obscure. In his works, Magritte played with everyday objects, habits and human emotions, placing them in foreign contexts and questioning their familiar meanings. He suggested new interpretations of old things in his deceptively simple paintings, making the commonplace profound and the rational irrational. He painted his canvases the same way he lived his life: with strange modesty and under constant analysis. Magritte was born in 1898 in the small town of Lessines, a cosmopolitan area of ​​Belgium heavily influenced by the French. Twelve years later, Magritte, together with his parents and two younger brothers, moved to Châtelet, where the future artist studied drawing. While on holiday with his grandmother and aunt Flora during the summer months, Magritte frequented an old cemetery in Soignies. In this cemetery Magritte often played with a little girl, opening trap doors and going down into the underground crypts. This experience would prove to be a major influence on his later works, as wooden caskets and granite headstones recur in many of his paintings. Magritte also developed a fascination with religion in this period, often dressing as a priest and celebrating mock masses in complete seriousness. In 1912, Régina Bertinchamp, Magritte's mother, committed suicide by drowning in the Sambre River. On the night of her suicide, the Magrittes followed Bertinchamp's footsteps to the river, where they found her dead with her nightgown wrapped around her face. Magritte was 14 years old at the time. Years later he would state that his only memory of his mother's death was his pride in being the center of attention and his subsequent identity formation as "the son of a dead woman". Some critics point out that many of the subjects in Magritte's paintings are veiled in white sheets as a reference to his mother's suicide. A year later, Magritte's father moved the family to Charleroi. It was in Charleroi that Magritte met his future wife Georgette Berger on a carousel at the town fair. However, the two would not see each other again until a chance meeting in Brussels years later. In Charleroi, Magritte soon lost interest in his studies and asked his father for permission to study at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. ...... middle of paper ...... Faubourg in Paris. The exhibition caused much scandal, but won few admirers. Shortly thereafter, Magritte resigned himself to his original style, although he bitterly attributed this retroaction to his desire to please Georgette, who preferred his earlier paintings. He continued to gain much success around the world with paintings such as L'Empire des Lumières (The Empire of Lights, 1954), which used standard Surrealist techniques and precise Magritte lines. On 15 August 1967 Magritte died in Brussels. Unlike many of his Surrealist colleagues, Magritte lived in a rather humble and unconventional way. He didn't draw much attention to himself and lived life relatively quietly. Despite his unpretentious lifestyle, Magritte managed to leave an artistic legacy capable of transforming the ordinary into the fantastic. While some art historians attribute Magritte's art to his desire to resist and combat the banality of everyday life, others suggest that his work goes beyond escapism and serves to reveal some of the darkest and most complex aspects of the human condition . Whatever the impetus behind his art, it is certain that Magritte's works are both hauntingly beautiful and profoundly provocative..