Utopia

1930–1954 · Residence

René Magritte House

1943–1947

The “Renoir period”: about seventy paintings

Under the occupation Magritte changed his palette and manner, moving towards the Impressionists and above all Renoir: he thought it important to lift people’s spirits and give them hope. Until spring 1947 he painted about seventy such pictures, among them “The Harvest” (1943); Breton and some admirers, collectors among them, received the change badly.

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

The “Vache period”: a crude Fauvist manner

In 1947–48, in his so-called “Vache period”, he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style.