Rene Magritte – La Grande Guerre

Description

Rene Magritte, La Grande Guerre is a lithograph made circa 2002 through 2010. This print is made by the estate after the original painting. This print is is numbered, features the dry stamps of the ADAG and the Magritte Succession and is countersigned in pencil by Mr. Charly Herscovici.  A proof edition is printed on the back of the lithograph, guaranteeing its authenticity.

This lithograph is 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.

Rene Magritte was an internationally acclaimed surrealist artist of all time, yet it was not until his 50s, when he was finally able to reach some form of fame and recognition for his work.

Rene Magritte described his paintings saying, “My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.”

The illustrative quality of Magritte’s pictures often results in a powerful paradox: images that are beautiful in their clarity and simplicity, but which also provoke unsettling thoughts.

They seem to declare that they hide no mystery, and yet they are also marvelously strange. As Magritte biographer David Sylvester brilliantly described, his paintings induce “the sort of awe felt in an eclipse.”

Magritte was fascinated by the interactions of textual and visual signs, and some of his most famous pictures employ both words and images. While those pictures often share the air of mystery that characterizes much of his Surrealist work, they often seem motivated more by a spirit of rational enquiry – and wonder – at the misunderstandings that can lurk in language.

The men in bowler hats that often appear in Magritte’s pictures can be interpreted as self-portraits. Portrayals of the artist’s wife, Georgette, are also common in his work, as are glimpses of the couple’s modest Brussels apartment

Although this might suggest autobiographical content in Magritte’s pictures, it more likely points to the commonplace sources of his inspiration. It is as if he believed that we need not look far for the mysterious, since it lurks everywhere in the most conventional of lives.

Rene Magritte, La Grande Guerre