Magritte: Colour Library (Phaidon Colour Library)

The paintings of the Belgian Surrealist Rene Margritte (1898-1967) have exerted an extraordinary fascination, particularly since the enormous increase in awareness and popularity of his work during the 1960s. Margritte shows us a world of silence and isolation in which familiar objects are altered or juxtaposed in impossible combinations in order to create a sense of disorientation and the absurd. Many of the most memorable paintings date from the three prolific years 1927-30, when he lived near Paris and was in close touch with the writer Andre Brenton and other French Surrealists.