Utopia

1930–1954 · Bopæl

René Magritte House

after 1945

Real commercial success arrives

By Magritte’s own account, real commercial success came only after 1945, and from then on he did not worry about money; in an interview in 1962 he declared that he would rather stop selling and live in poverty than become a businessman.

1945

Joins the Party a third time; writes an “Explanation”

In 1945 — according to Georgette, out of gratitude to the Russians — he joined the Communist Party again and the same year wrote a confidential “Explanation” to communist intellectuals. He feared that art would be reduced to propaganda for Marxism through easily understood styles and subjects, and equated such an approach with the methods of Nazi propaganda.

1946

The manifesto “Surrealism in Full Sunlight”

Renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he signed, with several other Belgian artists, the manifesto “Surrealism in Full Sunlight”.

1947–1948

Fake Picassos and forged banknotes

During the lean postwar years Magritte supported himself by producing fake Picassos, Braques and de Chiricos, later expanding into the printing of forged banknotes; he did it together with his brother Paul and the Surrealist Marcel Mariën, his “surrogate son”, who was left with the task of selling it all.