René Magritte

'The Lovers'- 1928 - René Magritte
René Magritte is perhaps one of the more famous surrealist artists who I have recently came across again. This painting 'The Lovers' was his response to the death of his mother, who committed suicide when he was 14. I thought the way he paints the subjects with their faces veiled tied in well with my theme of masks and how it also links to the portraits by Genny Woods who I looked at before, where she covers the subjects heads with pillows and belts.

A lot of his work seems to link back to the removal of the face, some of his paintings are quite unnerving as we all have a primal fear of the unknown, but I guess this is one of the points I am trying to get across with my own work.


'Le Pelerin' 1966


'Not To Be Reproduced (Portrait of Edward James)' - 1937
The thing that stood out to me in this painting was the notion of using mirrors to obscure the face, I might explore and expand this idea a bit more in my own work.


'The Future Of Statues' - 1937


'Schéhérazade' - 1950
I really like this series of paintings by Magritte as they feel like an abstract version of some of the masks I have been looking at.