The Art Gallery of New South Wales presents over 100 works by the Belgian surrealist in a landmark exhibition exclusive to Australia, as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25.
The first Australian blockbuster of watershed surrealist René Magritte (1898–1967) is taking centre stage at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. It includes a wide selection of his works featuring the iconic motifs of bowler hats, clouds, pipes, and apples – now indelibly part of visual culture.
Exclusive to Sydney, as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25, Magritte features more than 100 works from across the world – most of which have never been seen in Australia. It also inludes over 80 paintings, it includes examples of the artist’s experiments with publishing, film, and photography.
Organised chronologically, Magritte takes gallery visitors on a journey through more than four decades of the artist’s work – from his early avant-garde explorations and commercial works in the 1920s to his ground-breaking contributions to surrealism, his provocative works of the 1940s, and the celebrated paintings of his final years.
Audiences will encounter works that underscore Magritte’s profound influence on modern and contemporary art, while also discovering lesser-known aspects of his practice that reveal his subversive sense of humour and fierce independence.
Exhibition highlights include paintings we all recognise as instantly familiar images of surrealism, like The lovers 1928, The false mirror 1929, The human condition 1933, The liberator 1947, The kiss 1951, Golconda 1953, The dominion of light 1954 and The listening room 1952.
The exhibition marks also the centenary of the publication of the Manifesto of surrealism (1924) an opportunity to reflect on one of the most enduring art movements of the modern period and to consider its lasting impact today.
NSW Minister for the Arts John Graham was called René Magritte “one of the most recognised and influential artists of modern times”.
The minister said also that the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25 program “reflects our ambition to ensure Sydney is a global cultural hub”.
Art Gallery director, Dr Michael Brand underscored the arduous and complex process of securing such as blockbuster.
It took he said, “Many years in the making and drawing upon our unsurpassed international network of collaborative partners.”
The Art Gallery developed the exhibition with the collaboration of the Magritte Foundation, Brussels, and the Menil Collection, Houston, home to the most comprehensive Magritte collection outside Europe. It features loans from numerous public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels; Kawamura DIC Museum of Art, Sakura; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; as well as works from numerous important private collections, many of which have never been seen outside Europe.
“Fundamental to this exhibition is our anticipation to share not only the well-known paintings you would expect to see in a Magritte retrospective but also to shine a light on some surprising aspects of his artistic output, particularly from the period when the artist, working from occupied Belgium during and immediately after the Second World War, created some of the most intriguing and subversive paintings of his career,’ said Brand.
Exhibition curator and Art Gallery of NSW senior curator of modern and contemporary international art Nicholas Chambers said, “Magritte was ahead of his time”.
“He saw himself as a ‘painter of ideas’, and his legacy extends far beyond the world of art.
“Today we find his work echoed in diverse creative fields, from fiction and philosophy to cinema and advertising. We can imagine his delight at the ways in which his images continue to circulate and take on new meanings in the 21st century.’
Magritte is supported by the NSW Government and Destination NSW and is presented as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25 alongside the Art Gallery’s upcoming summer blockbuster Cao Fei: My City is Yours (opens 30 November).
A beautiful publication has been also produced which features reproductions of the works on display, and essays by curators and experts on surrealism. Contributors to the catalogue include Xavier Canonne, Nicholas Chambers, Natalie Dupêcher, Tai Spruyt and Julie Waseige.
Magritte is exclusive to the Art Gallery of New South Wales – it opened on October 26 to and will run ill February 2025. A Gallery Pass providing entry to both Magritte and Cao Fei exhibitions is available, as well as an Art Pass, which also grants entry to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory.
