Magritte
The first Australian retrospective of groundbreaking Belgian surrealist René Magritte brings over one hundred works to the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNWS) as part of the latest Sydney International Art Series. Of those works, more than eighty are paintings, shown alongside rarely seen photography, film and archival materials illuminating lesser-known aspects of the artist’s practice, which includes some of the most iconic paintings of the 20th-century surrealist movement. In collaboration with the Magritte Foundation, Brussels, and with the partnership of the Menil Collection, Houston – home to the most comprehensive Magritte collection outside Europe – AGNSW’s Magritte draws major works from collections all around the world, debuting most of them in Australia for the very first time. Truly expansive, the exhibition covers the painter’s earliest works to the renowned pieces created in his final years, giving audiences access to the reaches of an oeuvre engaged with the mystery and poetry of the ordinary and the tensions between reality and representation, image and language. Magritte opens on October 26, 2024 and runs until February 9, 2025.
