René Magritte, the magi­cian of enig­matic images, is one of the key figures of the art of the 20th century. The SCHIRN is devoting a solo show to the great Belgian surre­alist that high­lights his rela­tion­ship to the philos­ophy of his day. Magritte did not see himself as an artist, but rather as a thinking person, who conveyed his thoughts through painting. His entire life he sought to find a form of expres­sion equal to that of language. His curiosity and affinity with great contem­po­rary philoso­phers such as Michael Foucault resulted in a remark­able oeuvre, which is shown in a new light through over 70 works.

Orga­nized in coop­er­a­tion with the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, the exhi­bi­tion illu­mi­nates the key visual images that are concerned with the myth of inven­tion and the defi­n­i­tion of painting – and demon­strate the painter’s suspi­cion of simple answers and simple realism. On display are master­pieces from impor­tant inter­na­tional museums and collec­tions including Musée Magritte in Brus­sels, the Kunst­mu­seum Bern, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Menil Collec­tion in Houston, the Tate in London, the Metro­pol­itan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the National Gallery of Art in Wash­ington D.C.