On the fortieth anniversary of the death of Belgian surrealist Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (November 21, 1898 - August 15, 1967), we would like to acknowledge the debt he owes to Poe. Always the prophet of literature, Poe's work (not only his poetry, but much of his prose) anticipates the avant-garde from dada to surrealism to abstract expressionism. "Poe is Surrealist in adventure."
- Andre Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924
"In 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water. The image of his mother floating, her dress obscuring her face, may have influenced a 1927-1928 series of paintings of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including 'Les Amant,' but Magritte disliked this explanation."
"The Other Wordly Landscapes of E.A. Poe and Rene Magritte" - Renee Riese Hubert
"Several critics have found most intriguing Rene Magritte's outspoken admiration for Edgar Allan Poe. Hammacher recounts that the painter, during his only trip to the U.S. absolutely insisted on a visit to the Poe shrine."
"The Poker-Faced Enchanter" by Robert Hughes - Time Magazine
"Then there was Edgar Allan Poe. Magritte used him repeatedly. The Domain of Arnheim, Magritte's image of a vast, cold Alpine wall seen through the broken window of a bourgeois living room, with shards of glass on the floor that still carry bits of the sublime view on them, is the title of Poe's 1846 tale about a superrich American landscape connoisseur who creates a Xanadu for himself. 'Let us imagine,' says Poe's hero, 'a landscape whose combined vastness and definitiveness -- whose united beauty, magnificence and strangeness shall convey the idea of care, or culture . . . on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanity . . .' Yes, one can well imagine Magritte liking that. His work too sets up a parallel world, extremely strange and yet familiar, ruled by an absolutist imagination."
Rene Magritte's "The Domain of Arnheim," 1938. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. - Olga's Gallery
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