Musée Maillol, Paris
Exhibition until Monday 19 June 2006
From humble, even tragic beginnings - his mother committed suicide by throwing herself into a river in 1912 when he was thirteen – the Belgian artist René Magritte pushed out the frontiers of art and sculpture. Miró and Dali were family friends and both had a strong influence on his style. Although best known as a surrealist, Magritte was never afraid to experiment and risk failure, or to ask questions through his art that challenged the very fabric of society. Unlike many artists, he welcomed reaction to his work. He enjoyed the emotional responses, however baffled, when people saw his new picture or sculpture for the first time. One of his friends put it best. “We question [his] pictures," he said, "before listening to them, we question them at random. And we are astonished when the reply we had expected is not forthcoming."
What distinguishes this exhibition – described as “an original tour through the laboratory of a subversive mind” – is that it brings together Magritte’s little known creations. He was always a great advocate of collages, pictures made from odds and ends, assembled fragments pasted together. He worked on paper – the exhibition includes many of his drawings and sketches - and above all he loved to create gouaches, seen here in great numbers for the first time.
A term first used in France in the 18th century to describe a type of paint made from pigments bound in water-soluble gum, like watercolour, but with the addition of a white pigment in order to make it opaque, gouache as a technique in its own right became popular in the 1920s. Magritte needed to earn a living, and gouache offered the advantages of a matt finish and speed of drying as well as its opaque qualities that designers, illustrators and commercial artists were looking for. After 1938 Magritte adapted the method to add an exciting new dimension to his art, aptly described as surrealism bathed in sunlight.
FONDATION DINA VIERNY - MUSEE MAILLOL
61, rue de Grenelle
75007 PARIS
Tél. 01 42 22 59 58
contact@museemaillol.com
http://www.museemaillol.com
The illustrations featured on this page may not form part of the exhibition. They have been included to give you an idea of what you may see.
