Showing posts with label surrealism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surrealism. Show all posts

November 21 - Happy Birthday, Rene Magritte

  Posted on November 21, 2021


This is an update of my post published on November 21, 2010:



Rene Magritte was a Belgian artist who was born on November 21, 1898. Rene Magritte was a surrealist. Like other surrealist art, his paintings were surprising, unexpected, humorous in some cases, and (of course) surreal.

The idea of surrealism is to look at ordinary things in different ways.


Magritte made portraits of men in bowler hats—portraits with a weird twist that always hide the faces. For example, in one painting an apple hangs directly in front of the man's face.




Magritte also painted scenes in which the foregrounds were mixed in with the backgrounds, and he even painted some paintings of paintings.


Check out the short Magritte article at Art Smarts 4 Kids and click all the links to see these and other Magritte awesomeness. 

Art Smarts 4 Kids also has an idea for making a Magritte-style picture here. 


One of Magritte's paintings was called Personal Values. It looked like a room with various items—each drawn to a different scale—inside.


Use the picture as inspiration to make your own Personal Values poster—either draw, painting, or collage pictures of things that are important to you. 


Browse some Magritte images here. 























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May 11 – Happy Birthday, Salvador Dalí

Posted on May 11, 2018

Once upon a time, my husband and I were in a little in town named Figueres, in the northern portion of Spain named Catalonia, and we visited a museum that looked like this:






Yes, it's like a pinkish-red castle.

Yes, it's covered with plaster croissants.

Yes, it's topped with life-sized golden Oscar-like statues and huge ivory colored eggs!!

It's the Salvador Dalí museum, and it should not be too much of a surprise that Dalí is famous for surrealism. His museum is odd and surprising and interesting and chock full of art.





Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, on this date in 1904. He had a larger-than-life personality, a big imagination, and a love of "everything gilded and excessive." 

He made sure that his image was as flamboyant as his art!






Surrealism in art can have a lot of meaning - although maybe not the same sort of meaning for every viewer. For example, what do these drippy clocks mean to you?


Is this portrait of Dalí's wife merely interesting because we can recognize the face through all the exploding spherical weirdness? Or does the exploding spherical weirdness itself mean something?



And does the painting Swans Reflecting Elephants mean something about how we perceive reality?




Also on this date:













(Second Friday in May)



Plan ahead:


Check out my Pinterest boards for:
And here are my Pinterest boards for:
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November 21, 2010



Happy Birthday, Rene Magritte


This Belgian artist was born on November 21, 1898. Rene Magritte was a surrealist artist. Like other surrealist art, his paintings were surprising, unexpected, humorous in some cases, and (of course) surreal.

The idea of surrealism is to look at ordinary things in different ways.


Magritte made portraits of men in bowler hats—portraits with a weird twist that always hide the faces. For example, in one painting an apple hangs directly in front of the man's face. Magritte also painted scenes in which the foregrounds were mixed in with the backgrounds, and he even painted some paintings of paintings. Check out the short Magritte article at Art Smarts 4 Kids and click all the links to see these and other Magritte awesomeness. 

Art Smarts 4 Kids also has an idea for making a Magritte-style picture here. 

Try this Magritte-inspired project. 

One of Magritte's paintings was called Personal Values. It looked like a room with various items—each drawn to a different scale—inside. Use the picture as inspiration to make your own Personal Values poster—either draw, painting, or collage pictures of things that are important to you. 


Browse some Magritte images here. 


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