New Magritte Museum Houses the Largest Collection of René Magritte Art in the World |
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| Written by Jodi Fussell |
| Sunday, 17 January 2010 02:48 |
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A prestigious setting for Magritte  Site work was carried out in less than one year by GDF SUEZ
teams working alongside Belgium’s Régie des Bâtiments. Their contribution was
symbolized by an immense canvas tarpaulin inspired by L’Empire des Lumières
(Empire of Light) that covered the building during its restoration. The Hôtel
Altenloh, a neo-classical edifice located on Place Royale, was thus transformed
into a contemporary museum reference. With their modern, pedagogical treatment of the museum experience, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Magritte Foundation are unveiling to the public, with over 26,000 sq. ft. and five exhibition levels, the world’s largest collection of René Magritte works of art. Two hundred and fifty artworks and archive pieces are presented together for the first time. They are organized and presented in a manner linking them together by different levels of chronological and thematic interpretation. With its attachment to the prestigious ensemble of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium, the Magritte Museum has the advantage of an exceptional location in the heart of Brussels, the painter’s birthplace and the capital of Europe. The largest collection of works by René Magritte in the world The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, with the support of the Magritte Foundation, has the most remarkable collection of the artist’s work in the world. Representative of René Magritte’s creative evolution, it is unequalled in its richness. There are numerous masterpieces, including Empire of Light (1954), The Return (1940), and Shéhérazade (1948), as well as a highly diverse range of techniques and media (paintings, drawings, gouaches, photographs, sculptures, sundry objects, cinema films, posters, advertisements, etc.), with the various periods of the artist’s life fully covered. Mona Lisa is one of the most important images in René Magritte’s œuvre. It resumes three at once recognizable elements of his universe: the little bell, the sky and the curtain that are parts of his work since the middle of the1920s. At that time, facing a reality which seems for him more and more abstract, Magritte turns to surrealism. From then on the curtain appears as a new perspective of reality, a permanent spectacle that the painter tries to decrypt. The works presented come mainly from the bequests of Irène Scutenaire-Hamoir, and of Georgette Magritte, and successive purchases made by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, enriched by private loans and donations.  A new generation of single artist museums “A contemporary thought on the theme of biography,” according to Michel Draguet, Director of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium, the Musée Magritte Museum is multi-disciplinary, educational, and interactive. State-of-the-art technologies applied by GDF SUEZ are offered to the public to discover the work, thought, and life of Magritte, in careful observance of environment-friendly practices. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary work of René Magritte, the Musée Magritte Museum will also be a center for artistic and scientific exchange focusing on his work. Archives and unpublished documents are available and exhibitions-confrontations strengthen the evolutionary aspect of the path. Like the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or the Zentrum Paul Klee at Berne, the Magritte Museum is intended to become the leading international skill center for research, transmission and presentation of the life, thought and work of René Magritte. René Magritte, a universal artist Painter, illustrator, engraver, sculptor, photographer, film-maker, René Magritte (1898-1967) was one of the most eminent artists of the Surrealist movement. He is considered as the most important Belgian painter of the 20th century. Celebrated for his slyly subversive analysis of language and its conceptualization of image, René Magritte is “the man who transformed poetic images into plastic poems,” according to Michel Draguet, Director of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium. In his work, Magritte constantly covered his tracks so that the image retained its capacity to surprise, to transform obviousness into mystery. With his word-pictures, whose poetic charge remains indissociable from an anarchist inspiration, Magritte underscored the new status of the object. Through this revolutionary research, Magritte broadly anticipated contemporary artistic movements such as Pop Art or conceptual art. Visit : www.magrittemuseum.be/ Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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