Skip to main content

René Magritte Mixed Media

Belgian, 1898-1967

René Magritte is celebrated today as one of Surrealism’s most talented artists, and, alongside Salvador Dalí, the cheeky, subversive Belgian painter and author is the movement’s best-known representative, having cemented his legacy with what may be the most iconic five words in all of art history: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe).

Magritte’s success, though, hardly came overnight. Born in 1898 in Lessines to a wealthy manufacturer, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918 but quit before graduation. His early artistic work wavered between Cubism and semi-abstraction, and he found work as a graphic designer while experimenting with his own creative oeuvre. In the mid-1920s, he began to experiment with Surrealism, then a relatively nascent movement that had grown out of the absurdist Dada. Led by André Breton, Surrealism endeavored to record elements of the subconscious and present contradictory, sometimes even nonsensical, narratives that challenged the notion of an absolute reality.

Magritte’s first widely recognized work within this genre was 1927’s The Menaced Assassin, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Shortly after completing this work, Magritte relocated to Paris, to be closer to Breton and the center of the Surrealist movement. This decision would prove critical in his life — and in the trajectory of Surrealist art history. The three years Magritte spent in Paris were his most prolific, and by the close of the 1920s he had completed some of his best-known work, including the seminal 1929 The Treachery of Images, a simple picture of what appears to be a pipe, with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” in neat script below it.

Magritte returned to Brussels in the early 1930s but continued experimenting with work that wavered between dreamlike and nonsensical. His influences throughout this part of his career ranged from Breton to Giorgio de Chirico and Dalí. While living in German-occupied Belgium beginning in the early 1940s, Magritte entered what is often called his Renoir period or what he labeled “Sunlit Surrealism.” He worked in comparatively brighter, more vibrant colors and produced oil paintings and gouaches that were overrun with light and the type of brushstrokes that are usually associated with Impressionist art.

Like many artists during and after the war, Magritte thought deeply about art’s role in answering big existential questions and broke with Surrealism as a result. His Impressionistic The Fifth Season in 1943 resembled little of what he’d painted in years past. His so-called Vache period that followed would represent another stylistic shift that owed to German Expressionism. Not everything changed, however; Magritte would go on to revisit his earliest creative impulses, in some cases appropriating elements from fellow artists in his own depictions, as with his Perspective II: Manet’s Balcony in 1950, a playful and probing reinterpretation of Edouard Manet’s The Balcony. Later in his career, the artist dabbled in sculpture, before dying in 1967.

Find original René Magritte prints and other art on 1stDibs.

to
1
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
1
1
1
1
1
1
31
281
273
150
134
1
Artist: René Magritte
Le fils de l'homme, limited edition skateboard Surrealist artist 36/250 (estate)
By René Magritte
Located in New York, NY
Rene Magritte Le fils de l'homme, 2018 7-Ply Grade A Canadian Maplewood 31 × 8 inches Edition 35/250 Authorized artist's signature on the deck; hand numbered. along with separate han...
Category

2010s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Wood, Mixed Media, Screen

Related Items
Futura Skateboard Deck (Futura 2000)
By Futura
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Futura Skateboard Deck: Medium: Silkscreen on Maplewood Skateboard Deck. Year: 2021. Dimensions: 31 x 8 inches (38.1 x 22.9 cm). In original shrink wrap & box; excellent condition. Printed signature from an edition of unknown. Published by Futura Laboratories. Futura 2000...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Wood, Screen

Black Panther & Coral Reef
By Heejin Sutton
Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
There are so many things in this world that do not match yet coexist. Hate and love, good and evil, joy and sorrow. Despite this, we constantly pursue perfec...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Sans Titre Original Mixed Media (1)
By Roberto Matta
Located in Hollywood, FL
Artist: Roberto Matta Title: Sans Titre Original Mixed Media (1) Medium: Mixed Media on paper Signed: Hand Signed Measurements: 12" x 17" Framed: 22.5" x 27" Certificate of Authe...
Category

Late 20th Century Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

1967 Pop Art, May Wilson, Surrealist Feminist Junk Assemblage Painted Sculpture
By May Wilson
Located in Surfside, FL
May Wilson (1905–1986) was an American artist and figure in the 1960s New York City avant-garde art world. A pioneer of the feminist and mail art movement, she is best known for her Surrealist junk assemblages and her "Ridiculous Portrait" photo collages. Wilson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, into an underprivileged family. Her father died when she was young. She was reared by her Irish Catholic mother, who sewed piecework at home. Wilson left school after the ninth grade to become a stenographer/secretary to help support her family. When she turned 20, she married a young lawyer, William S. Wilson, Jr., and give birth to her first child. She continued to work until the birth of her second child, after which she devoted her energies primarily to mothering and homemaking. In 1942, the couple had prospered enough to move to Towson, Maryland, where she began to take correspondence courses in art and art history from several schools, including the University of Chicago. In 1948, after the marriage of their daughter, the couple moved to a gentleman's farm north of Towson, where she pursued painting and gave private art lessons to neighbors. She exhibited her paintings, scenes of everyday life painted in a flat, purposefully primitive manner in local galleries and restaurants. In 1952 and 1958, she won awards for work submitted to juried exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1956, her son, the writer Williams S. Wilson, gave to Ray Johnson, the founder of the New York Correspondence School, his mother's address. This began a friendship and artistic collaboration between Johnson and Wilson, which would last the remainder of her life. Wilson became an integral part of Johnson's mail art circle and was initiated into the New York avant-garde through letters and small works that she exchanged with Robert Watts, George Brecht, Ad Reinhardt, Leonard Cohen, Arman, and many others. When her marriage dissolved, she moved to New York City in the spring of 1966, aged 61, taking up residence first in the Chelsea Hotel and then in a studio next door, where she threw legendary soirées and became known as the "Grandma Moses of the Underground". By the time she arrived, Wilson was already working with photomontage collage techniques. Encouraged by Johnson, who had sent her magazines through the mail, she scissored patterns into images of pin-up girls and muscle men until they resembled doilies or snowflakes, as Wilson called them. She decorated her hotel room and later her studio on West 23rd Street with these and other manipulated, found object images. Around this time, she also began her series of neo Dada "Ridiculous Portraits", for which she would ride the subway to Times Square, where she made exaggerated faces in photo booths. She then would cut and paste her photo-booth face onto postcards, along with Old Master reproductions, fashion shoots, and softcore Playboy magazine pornography. Long before artists such as Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura embarked on similar critical projects, Wilson's "Ridiculous Portraits" sent up the ubiquitous sexism and ageism that exists in popular and fine-art images of women. At the age of 70, she converted a nude photograph of herself into a stamp that she pasted on envelopes. Her collages and humorous self-portraits were made as gifts and mail-art items for her friends and were not widely known until after her death. Her work was contemporaneous with the Arte Povera artists Jannis Kounellis and ‎Michelangelo Pistoletto. She was also an innovator of junk art assemblages that incorporated real objects, such as high-heel shoes, bed sheets, sauce pans, toasters, liquor bottles, ice trays, and wrapped baby dolls. Her sculptures were inspired by Surrealist and Dada practices and are similar in spirit to Yayoi Kusama's contemporary accumulations. Wilson was the subject of a 1969 experimental documentary by Amalie R. Rothschild, "Woo Hoo? May Wilson". Since her death, May Wilson's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and retrospectives at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York; the Morris Museum, Morristown, N.J.; the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City; and The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Selected Exhibitions 2010 "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968", University of the Arts, Philadelphia (traveling exhibition) 2008 "1968/2008: The Culture of Collage", Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, City 2008 "Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson", Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey 2008 "Woo Who? May Wilson", Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City 1995 [Retrospective], The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland 2001 "May Wilson: Ridiculous Portraits and Snowflakes", Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York, City 2001 "Inside Out: Outside In-The Correspondence of Ray Johnson and May Wilson", Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, California 1991 "May Wilson: The New York Years", Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York City 1973 "Sneakers", Kornblee Gallery, New York City 1973 "Small Works: Selections from the Richard Brown Baker Collection of Contemporary Art", RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island 1971 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1970 "Sculpture Annual 1970", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1965 The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland 1962 The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 1957 Bookshop Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland Public collections Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, Maryland) Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, New York) References William S. Wilson, "May Wilson: Constructing Woman (1905-1986)", in Ann Aptaker, ed., Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson, ed. Ann Aptaker, Morristown, N.J.: Morris Museum, Camhi, Leslie, "Late Bloomer", Village Voice, December 18, 2001 Giles, Gretchen, "Cosmic Litterers: Artists Ray Johnson and May Wilson: Taking the Cake", "Northern California Bohemian," June 14–20, 2001 McCarthy, Gerard, "May Wilson: Homespun Rebel", Art in America, vol. 96, no. 8, September 2008, pp. 142–47 Sachs, Sid and Kalliopi Minioudaki, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968. Philadelphia: The University of the Arts, 2010, ISBN 978-0789210654 Wilson, William S. Art is a Jealous Lover: May Wilson: 1905-1986, andy warhol...
Category

1960s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Metal

Where Is It? l
By Heejin Sutton
Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
The world that I live in is uncertain, unstable, but I have to keep going and find something that can comfort me. This work is talking about the uncomfortable moment, but hopeful future, at the same time. This piece is made by layering Korean mulberry paper on a wooden panel with homemade flour glue. Then I apply a glue base. Next, I draw my sketch, and trace it on the paper. Then I paint three or four layers of a background color using pigments and glue base. Lastly, I paint the animal subject in fine detail, which takes most of time. The painting is on a cradled wood panel with finished edges. It comes ready to hang.

About the Artist
Heejin has been been drawing for as long as she can remember. She grew up with a serious illness and spent much of her childhood in the hospital. Drawing served as an outlet for her, bringing her peace and distraction. Heejin says there was no doubt as she grew up that she wanted to be an artist. She studied oriental painting extensively as a college student in South Korea and then went on to study art therapy in graduate school.

Where Is It? l
Heejin Sutton...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Foot Musik
By Roberto Matta
Located in Malmo, SE
Artwork size: 56 x 58 cm. Frame size: 76 x 78 cm. Free shipment worldwide. Archive number (P90/36) Acquired directly from the artist. “The heart is an eye,” writes Nobel laureate Octavio Paz in an essay on Matta’s paintings. Matta creates a world coloured both by a sunny faith in the future and by visions of impending doom. Roberto Sebastian Echaurren Antonio Matta, who died aged 91 on 23 November 2002, was born in Santiago, Chile, on 11 November 1911 into a family with Spanish, French and Basque roots, and raised in an atmosphere of religiosity. By the age of 21 he had graduated and begun work as an architect, but his leisure time he devoted to sketching and painting. In 1933 he travelled to Europe for the first time, visiting Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy and other countries, and subsequently taking the initiative to collaborate with the architect, Le Corbusier. As time passed, however, Matta’s enthusiasm for a career in architecture waned, and he began to devote himself full-time to art, making early acquaintances with surrealists such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, André Breton and others. Between 1939 and 1948 Matta, like many of his artistic contemporaries, lived in self-imposed exile in the USA, but, after almost 10 years’ absence from Europe, he returned to make first Rome and then, a few years later, Paris his home. Throughout most of the rest of his life Matta commuted between his studio in Paris and his creative refuge in the monastery outside Rome. And it is here, in Italy, that he produced his greatest paintings. Matta’s first retrospective in Sweden was organised in 1956 when his works were exhibited in what was then Galerie Colibri – run by, among others, the artist C O Hultén at number 36 Södra Förstadsgatan in Malmö, Sweden. This was also the time when Matta began to collaborate with poets and other artists in Sweden. He produced the illustrations for Lasse Söderberg’s first anthology of poems, Akrobaterna (“The Acrobats”), published in 1955, and was also responsible for the cover of the Swedish art and literary magazine Salamander. In 1959 the first museum exhibition of Matta’s work in Europe was arranged at the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet) in Stockholm. Held under the aegis of Pontus Hultén, it was entitled “Fifteen Forms of Doubt” and included 15 or so gigantic paintings...
Category

1990s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Foot Musik
H 29.93 in W 30.71 in
Meerkat & Coral Reef, Original Painting
By Heejin Sutton
Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
This piece is made by layering Korean mulberry paper on a wooden panel with homemade flour glue. Then I apply a glue base. Next, I draw my sketch, and trace ...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Cirque du Soleil n.38
By Sergio Barletta
Located in Roma, IT
Hand Signed. Mixed technique and collage on cardboard. Passepartout included. This artwork is from the series "Cirque du Soleil" that the Italian arti...
Category

1990s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media, Cardboard

Cirque du Soleil n.38
Cirque du Soleil n.38
H 27.56 in W 19.69 in D 0.08 in
Dogs Fighting -- Pelea de Perros
By German Perez
Located in Troy, NY
At the center of the pictorial space are two creatures boldly outlined in black with their backs to each other. One is bright red, and to his left, is his opponent in dark yellow. The artist calls this a fight between two dogs, a word-play when said in Spanish. On the canvas we find splashes of color, chalk and other unique lines by the artist. This piece was specifically painted to be shown at the Martinez...
Category

Early 2000s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Mixed Media

Untitled 1, Mixed Media Painting on Paper by Edward Henderson, 1991
By Edward Henderson
Located in Long Island City, NY
This mixed media painting on paper was created by American artist Edward Henderson (b. 1951). Henderson describes his process as an attempt to relinquish our comfortable recollectio...
Category

1990s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Paint, Paper, Mixed Media

Black & White
Located in Dallas, TX
​Antony Collings, also known as “ABC” is an international selling artist with a growing portfolio and social media following. His art has been displayed in galleries and exhibitions ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Spray Paint, Screen

untitled
By Remo Michael Farruggio
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Pastel, colored pencil with collage elements Unsigned Condition: Repaired tear in the area of the moon, only visible from verso Pin holes in the corners and in the ...
Category

1940s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Pastel, Mixed Media, Color Pencil

Previously Available Items
Décalcomanie (Limited Edition)
By René Magritte
Located in New York, NY
Rene Magritte Décalcomanie, 2018 2 Skateboards made of 7-Ply Grade A Canadian Maplewood 31 × 8 inches Edition 22/250 Authorized artist's signature on the deck; hand numbered. along with separate hand signed COA by The Skateroom and gallery EDITION OF 250 PRODUCED AND NUMBERED BY THE SKATEROOM IN 2018 HAND SIGNED COA BY THE SKATEROOM © SUCCESSION RENÉ MAGRITTE – SABAM, BELGIUM - 2018 ART SET OF 2 SKATEBOARDS EACH DECK MEASURES APPROX. 31X8IN (80X20CM) MADE OF 7 PLY GRADE A CANADIAN MAPLE WOOD TOP-PRINT INCLUDES PRINTED SIGNATURE OF THE ARTIST Rene Magritte biography Clouds, pipes, bowler hats, and green apples: these remain some of the most immediately recognizable icons of René Magritte, the Belgian painter and well-known Surrealist. He produced a body of work that rendered such commonplace things strange, slotting them into unfamiliar or uncanny scenes, or deliberately mislabeling them in order to “make the most everyday objects shriek aloud.”1 With his pictorial and linguistic puzzles, Magritte made the familiar disturbing and strange, posing questions about the nature of representation and reality. Magritte began his career as a graphic artist and quasi-abstract painter, but his work underwent a transformation in 1926, when he began to reinvent himself as a figurative artist. A key canvas in this project was The Menaced Assassin, his largest and most densely populated painting to date. Completed in 1927 and included in the artist’s first solo exhibition, at the Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels, it helped launch his career as a Surrealist painter whose interest in severing the links between surface and essence would remain a constant. Painted in the deadpan style that would become his hallmark, each figure appears as though in a state of suspended animation: a naked female corpse with blood at the mouth lies on a red chaise...
Category

2010s Surrealist René Magritte Mixed Media

Materials

Wood, Screen, Mixed Media

René Magritte mixed media for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic René Magritte mixed media available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by René Magritte in wood, screen print, maple and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 21st century and contemporary and is mostly associated with the Surrealist style. Not every interior allows for large René Magritte mixed media, so small editions measuring 8 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of David Gilhooly, Mikulas Kravjansky, and Roberto Matta. René Magritte mixed media prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,800 and tops out at $3,500, while the average work can sell for $1,800.

Recently Viewed

View All