Private collection, Brussels, Belgium. Two people star in this beautiful canvas. Their identities are hidden behind two wet veils that cover their faces. We know they are a man and a woman because ...

 René Magritte's lovers:

a bitter kiss

  The Lovers by René Magritte is one of those paintings that are said to have spilled many rivers of ink. Today this topic should be updated and said that it is one of the pictures that appears in countless blogs. Well today we join that amount and spill our words.

In issue 10 of Atticus Magazine we began a work on The kiss in the history of art. In the next issue we continue with that journey, a sweet journey, through both pictorial and sculptural samples that have this effusive display of love as their protagonist.

As a preview (which in turn will be the start of the delivery) I leave you the work that our collaborator Esther Bengoechea has done on The Lovers. Excellent work for a painting that not only shows what we see. We must not forget that Magritte belonged to the surrealist movement, an artistic movement that used images in painting to express their emotions, even if they did not follow a logical approach.

LOVERS

Loa lovers

René Magritte (1898 – 1967)

1928

Oil on canvas, 54.2 x 73 cm.

Private collection, Brussels, Belgium.

Two people star in this beautiful canvas. Their identities are hidden behind two wet veils that cover their faces. We know they are a man and a woman because of their clothing and we assume they are a couple because they are kissing. The background helps us little to define the scene. They are under a roof, you can see part of it and the plaster that adorns it, but the fact that one wall is maroon and the background sky blue makes one wonder if it is another wall painted a different color or if they are simply under a roof but open to the outside. abroad. The Belgian painter René Magritte, father of The Lovers, manages to attract the public's attention due to the wet fabrics covering the faces of the protagonists and the harsh colors of the canvas. There is a predominance of maroon, blue and black, highlighting white above all to underline the wet effect of the fabrics that cover them. His first contact with painting was at the age of eleven, at which time he began his painting classes. drawing. His first works follow an impressionist line and his work was influenced by cubism, orphism, futurism and purism, without forgetting the so-called magical realism, before landing on surrealism, Magritte's movement par excellence. With his brush he tries to capture a different reality, something that surprises the viewer. Magritte titled The Lovers to two different works, in which the same protagonists appear and in the same clothes. But, there is always a but, the two works differ for two reasons: the background, we go from walls and ceiling to a natural background with trees and a field in the background, and the action, here they do not kiss but rather they both look forward with their eyes. faces next to each other. For the topic of this article, we are going to focus on the kiss of The Lovers. I think that if the Belgian genius raised his head and heard the number of sighs of love that his painting has caused, he would lower his head again and return underground thinking that the world has gone crazy. René Magritte painted The Lovers in 1928, sixteen years old. after his mother committed suicide by jumping into the Sa River