The Getty Research Institute has acquired an important group of letters and postcards from the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte. The group of over 40 autographed letters and postcards to the Belgian surrealist poet Paul Colinet documents Magritte’s life and career from 1934, about the time the two surrealists met, to 1957, when Colinet passed away. They number about 50 pages, and also include a telegram, a typescript copy of a letter, and eight letters and postcards from Colinet, all contained in a brown morocco binder. The collection of letters adds to the already impressive archival holdings on Magritte at the GRI, and offers a valuable glimpse of Magritte within the context of both his personal life and career and surrealism’s spread into Belgium and beyond. Magritte was born Ren’-Fran’ois Ghislain Magritte in 1898, in Lessines, Belgium. In the fall of 1916, he enrolled at the Acad’mie Royale des Beaux-Arts, but also began working as a commercial artist, an endeavor that intermittently afforded him financial stability for the next few decades. By 1920, Magritte had made contact with Marinetti and the futurists, and become fully involved in the Belgian avant-garde. In 1922, he married Georgette Berger, and the following year he saw a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Le Chant d’Amour (1914), which triggered Magritte’s shift away from cubism, though his first full-blown surrealist paintings did not appear before 1925. Magritte’s first one-person show took place in 1927, and he would achieve countless other solo and group exhibitions. His exhibition at LACMA, ‘Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images,’ featured illustrated letters from the GRI Special Collections, and encouraged a reconsideration of Magritte’s legacy by highlighting his importance to later artists.
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