René MAGRITTE and the spotlighting of the Belgian Surrealist group. 1945.

René Magritte (1898-1967)

Autograph letter signed to the publisher Alain Gheerbrant.

A page in-4°. Brussels (1945/46)

Interesting letter relating to the spotlighting of the Belgian Surrealist group.

“ Dear Sir, Here is a photo of Marcel Marïen: “From Sorde to Lenin” which I would like to see included in your issue of Vrille dedicated to Surrealism in Belgium. Paul Nougé sends you texts. Yesterday, I sent you texts and photos. I hope to hear from you soon and all the best to you. Magritte. »

Marcel Mariën (1920.1993) is a multifaceted Belgian surrealist artist, writer, editor, photographer, filmmaker, creator of collages and unusual objects. In 1979 he was the first historian of Surrealism in Belgium.

In 1935, he attended the École populaire supérieure for workers and encountered two paintings by René Magritte in an exhibition. In 1936, he discovered surrealist books and magazines and began writing poems in their spirit. In 1937, in Brussels, he met René Magritte, then Louis Scutenaire, Paul Nougé, and in September participated in a surrealist exhibition organized by in London. There he exhibited his first object, L'introuvable (title given by Magritte), his glasses, which he had just broken, reduced to a single lens and two arms. Mariën very quickly participated, with Scutenaire and Nougé, in the invention of the titles of Magritte's paintings. In August 1943, he published the first biography of Magritte, and, in 1979, the reference work on the history of Surrealism in Belgium. In 1983, Georgette Magritte sued him following the publication of The Raft of Memory , in which he recounted his adventures with Magritte. He died in 1993 of cancer. At the Schaerbeek cemetery, a sentence taken from one of his last notebooks is engraved on his grave: “ There is no merit in being anything ”.

Paul Nougé (1895.1967) is a Belgian poet, instigator and theorist of Surrealism in Belgium. In 1925, Nougé met the French surrealists: Aragon, Breton, Eluard and thus signed the tract The Revolution First and Always. Nougé, René Magritte, Goemans, Louis Scutenaire and ELT Mesens coming together, the autumn of 1926 marked the beginning of the constitution of the Surrealist group of Brussels through the preparation of joint leaflets.