The artist and his icon
Surrealist painter René Magritte shown with one of his works featuring a bowler hat.
René Magritte
Belgian artist
Also known as: René-François-Ghislain Magritte
RenĂ© Magritte (born November 21, 1898, Lessines, Belgiumâdied August 15, 1967, Brussels) was a Belgian artist, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters, whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy, and mystery. His works were characterized by particular symbolsâthe female torso, the bourgeois âlittle man,â the bowler hat, the apple, the castle, the rock, the window, and other ordinary objects, which were often set in unusual or unsettling situations. Magritteâs father was a...