Pipe

One of the most popular artists of the surrealist movement is Rene François Ghislain Magritte. Magritte was born in Belgium in 1898. His father was a businessman so the family moved very often. At the age of 13, his mother committed a suicide, flung herself into the river Samble. He saw his mother on the river, covered her face with her white dress and this trauma will shape his paintings later. He started drawing classes at the age of 12, worked with Gisbert Combaz later. Before he made money by his art, he had worked for commercial advertising. After he saw the painting 'The Song of Love' by Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, in 1922, he's got so impressed and emotional, and said 'for the first time on a painting we can see the idea and the thought'. He finally shaped his way of art and made his first surrealist painting 'The Lost Jokey' in 1926. The Treachery of Images, also known as 'This is not a Pipe' was made between 1928 - 1929. By writing 'this is not a pipe' under a paint of a pipe for the first time a paint was telling something which was also so ironic. What we understand from this painting is representations are not the real thing, they only resemble the real thing. As an illustrator and a painter, he made so many funny, confusing paintings with putting different kinds of things together and he wanted us to unlock the power of our imagination.