René Magritte

*René Magritte initially worked as a designer at a wallpaper factory and later made many posters. Magritte's debut in painting was cubist, futurist and abstract work, influenced by his boss Victor Servranckx in the wallpaper factory UPL (les Usines Peters-Lacroix, in Machelen). After being introduced to the work of Giorgio de Chirico, in 1925, Magritte's work began to assimilate surrealist elements. Magritte mainly made paintings (oil on canvas), but also gouaches, objects and collages. Under the direction of E.L.T. Mesens, he contributed to the magazine Oesophage and in 1927 had his first individual exhibition at the gallery "Le Centaure", in Brussels. Between 1927 and 1930, Magritte lived in a suburb of Paris, where his Surrealist vision was crowned with the friendship of Paul Eluard and André Breton, who had already written The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. When Breton once demanded that Magritte's wife take off a necklace with a cross, he decided to return to Brussels. When in 1930 the "Galerie Le Centaure", where Magritte worked under contract, went bankrupt, E.L.T. Mesens was able to buy all his works, at that time about 200.