René Magritte is one of the most important representatives of international surrealism. Magritte's art began to flourish in 1920 in the temperamental milieu of the Brussels avant-garde. His early works with their geometrical forms are rooted in the 'Plastique Pure' (Pure Aesthetics) movement. As the Belgian surrealistic group - which included Paul Nougé, Louis Scutenaire, E.L.T. Mesens and, of course, René Magritte - gradually began to take shape in 1925, its ties with the father of surrealism,André Breton, and his Paris entourage strengthened. Magritte's paintings are among the best known and yet most enigmatic works of art the twentieth century has produced. Shoes become feet, a pipe cannot be a pipe, a nocturnal landscape features a clear blue sky studded with white clouds, a locomotive emerges from a chimney. We have all been surprised at one time or another by the strange reality of Magritte's paintings and thus discovered to our astonishment another, uncanny side to our familiar surroundings. His visual enigmas arouse as much curiosity today as they did seventy years ago.