The Belgian Painters

One of the best-known Belgian modern painters: Magritte

Belgium: a land of painters...

Belgium has a rich history in the art of painting. Famous painters like Bruegel , the Van Eycks, Rubens,Memling, Roger de la Pasture are Belgians. Just think about: the technique of the Western Art oil painting was invented in Bruges , this famous Belgian boom-town of the Middle Ages, where so many artists concentrated to be near the rich and the powerful of that time.

Art is part of the daily environment, and in Brussels the underground system has its major stations decorated by modern Belgian artists like Sommeville, Pol Bury, Alechinsky, and many others ... and even one is devoted to Hergé and his comics characters like Tintin, the Thompsons, Calculuus!!

FAMOUS BELGIAN MODERN PAINTERS

JAMES ENSOR

1860-1949

This painter cannot be dissociated from his hometown Ostende , city on the shore of the North Sea, very famous "tourist spot" at the end of the 19th Century, eclectic and cosmopolitan.

Ensor was never well accepted as painter during his life, due to his very critical way of depicting social life and his contemporaries in his drawings.

Figuration or symbolic for death is often present as well. Very accentuated colors contribute to create the very special Ensor's ambience.

"L'entrée Triomphale du Christ ŕ Bruxelles" - The Triumphant Entry of Christ in Brussels- is considered as one of his masterpieces which is now in the Getty Museum (California- USA).

James Ensor is certainly one of the precursors of the Modern Art in painting. His house in Ostende is now a small museum with memorabilia of the painter.

RENÉ MAGRITTE

1898-1967

Magritte: one of the greatest surrealist painters

René Magritte, the man with the hat...

Magritte the painter of the cool surrealistic worlds , the master of the modern images. With Delvaux, another Belgian surrealist painter, they were the best illustrators of the poetic surrealism in painting.

IS REALITY A DREAM?...

René Magritte is one of the most famous modern painters as his images and colors appealed to almost everyone. There must be something in our subconscious that is in tune with the scenes created by this painter!

As for all surrealists, in literature, painting or cinema, dreams and psychoanalysis were good keys for Magritte to apprehend a reality that anyway does not exist... A lot of his paintings looks like views from a dream, a game were reality is obliged to admit his limits.

As a proof, he was often repeating the same scenes in endless variations in different paintings. In other cases Magritte was distorting the almighty reality with his sense of humor...

Magritte is still one of the most influential artist in the graphic arts, his images being adapted by followers in a lot of modern media like: films, TV, illustrations and posters, publicity...

THIS IS NOT A PIPE... was the famous text Magritte wrote under the realistic view of a pipe. This was a pure surrealist act of him: the image is not the reality! By this is was even discovering ways similar to certain modern philosophers redefining mathematical logic and declarations (...The map is NOT the territory).

This Belgian painter was born in Lessines, in the south of Belgium, and very quickly was attracted by the paintings of the first surrealist painters in Europe.

René Magritte did not find success immediately. He was even for a time painting cartons for a Belgian wall paper factory; most probably these paper decorations, repeated, very detailed, where colors contrasts or color matching were essential, but with no real context, gave Magritte later one of his technical inspiration.

The rest came from his brilliant imagination and the images found in daily life... but always clashing the reality and questioning its dominance. As an illustration for this look at the splendid "Chateau des Pyrénées" - click on the small image to get the full size one (60KB)

A BELGIAN LIFE...

Magritte stayed all his life in Belgium. He was never found of traveling and refused to play the role of a Bohemian artist. Maybe his famous theory again: the image is NOT the reality!!! Being exuberant and purposely provocative with your life is not a proof you are an artist; having the appearance and context of a middle-class person is no proof you are one..

Magritte was very attached to his friends, his wife and his Belgian surrounding. All his life he painted in his dining-room, near the window, refusing to establish an artist studio as a such. A surrealistic act as well...

Attracted by images he was of course very found of cinema, the totally surrealistic media (where is true reality in a film...?). He organized short films with the help of his friends: humor, surrealism, dreams were all applied. These films always remained private things.

He was also interested by the possibilities of photography and realized some works with this technique.

From the early fifties, Magritte fame grew internationally and more and more exhibition of his works were shown around the world. He was even commissioned to decorate public buildings as the Knokke casino on the North-Sea shore of Belgium, with very personal frescoes.

SURREALISTIC SUCCESS...

Beyond his success as a painter, there were Magritte-like images everywhere: the publicity world was pillaging his ideas in set-ups were plagiary were transparent!

Book covers, product packagings, publicity posters, TV clips... just name them: Magritte all over! The publicity boys were all probably sleeping every night with the catalog of Magritte's paintings...

In fact Magritte was never mad about this: on the contrary he was encouraging any form of reproduction of his paintings... A surrealistic way to create a gallery...

Only after his death, his widow and right holders had to try to keep the idea on better tracks: too many were now using direct copies of his paintings in printing forms without any recognition to the painter and of course not any copyrights.

Numerous museum in the world carry some of the Magritte's painting. In Belgium itself there are different museums where you may admire an important part of his work. In the Brussels'Museum of Modern Art, among other interesting works, there is one of the versions of a masterpiece: L'empire des Lumičres (Empire of Lights); no electronics scanning can reproduce fully the ambiance and lights Magritte put in this painting. You will have to see it in the reality (?)...