Europe in the 1920s and 1930s was a hotbed of new artistic movements, giving rise to the strange geometries of Cubism and the contradictory images of Surrealism. Because Surrealism has continued to have a lasting impact on the art world, we can owe its appeal to artists like the Belgian painter Rene Magritte.

Magritte was born in 1898 in Lessines, Belgium. As a youth, he was affected from living with his mother's suicidal nature. Beginning in 1915, Magritte painted in the Impressionist style and went on to study art in Brussels. After marrying a childhood friend and a brief tour in the Belgian infantry, he went on to become a full-time painter. Although his 1927 exhibition in Brussels ended in disaster, Magritte found new life in Paris, where he joined Andre Breton and the Surrealist community.

His painting flourished thereafter, promoting surrealism from the rapid changes of the 1930s Europe and the German occupation of Belgium that began in 1940 and ended in 1945. Following the war, Magritte let go of his wartime style (reflected in his "Renoir Period" paintings) and renewed his commitment to Breton and pre-war Surrealism. Although he died in 1967, it was during the Sixties that Magritte's work enjoyed a revival in popularity, influencing the pop art and minimalist movements of the time.

The defining quality of Magritte's work is that he depicts the ordinary subjects in unusual contexts. The ordinary image of a man wearing a suit and hat would be thrown into the surreal context of a man with an apple obscuring his face or multiple men in suits falling over a city like raindrops. Magritte believed that the image of an object was more mysterious and alluring than the physical object itself. For example, The Treachery of Images shows us the painting of a pipe and the words "This is not a pipe" written below it, pointing out the illusion of a tangible object and the mystery of human thought.

Although Magritte is best known for his painting The Son of Man—which depicts a man in a suit whose face is obscured by a green apple—his surreal form is also visible in such works as Time Transfixed. Painted in 1938, the scene shows a locomotive engine jutting out from a fireplace into an empty room. The tall mirror over the mantelpiece shows us in the reflection that there are no people in the room to observe this strange phenomenon.

When the work was first exhibited, Magritte did not care for the English title Time Transfixed, preferring the original French phrase La Durée poignardée ("Ongoing time stabbed by a dagger") as it better reflected his intent. Rather than delve into the surreal with fantastic creatures and shapes, Magritte took two familiar images—a locomotive and a dining room fireplace—and juxtaposed them for a surreal effect. He hoped to evoke a feeling of mystery, to capture the paradoxes and strange products that result from human thought and imagination.

The work of Rene Magritte can be found in such museums as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Image by Octavio Ruiz Cervera on Flickr