Magritte in the sun: his Renoir period at the Musée de l'Orangerie - new dates

Paris offers a number of fine exhibitions dedicated to the Second World War, and among them, the Musée de l'Orangerie highlights the amusing work of an artist disillusioned by the German occupation: René Magritte, who decided from 1941 to 1947 to represent "the beautiful side of life" in so-called solar paintings, inspired by Impressionists such as Renoir or Seurat, and which came to be known as his"Renoir period".

This beautiful exhibition, entitled Magritte / Renoir. Le surréalisme en plein soleil, is waiting to be discovered from May 19 to July 19, 2021. Online ticketing opens on May 6: as museum capacity is reduced, remember to reserve your place in advance to be sure of being able to admire this exhibition as soon as it opens.

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The Musée de l'Orangerie showcases some sixty paintings and forty drawings from the artist's creative period. To better understand the influence of these works, the museum is presenting paintings by Renoir alongside those by other artists, to bring these seemingly distant worlds face to face.

In the exhibition Magritte en plein soleil, Magritte's paintings are set against masterpieces by Renoir, Picabia and other artists, notably Jeff Koons, who was inspired by the Renoir period.

In a letter to Paul Eluard in 1941, Magritte wrote "... the beautiful side of life would be the field I would explore. By this I mean all the traditional paraphernalia of charming things, women, flowers, birds, trees, the atmosphere of happiness, etc. ... it's a rather powerful charm that now replaces in my paintings the disquieting poetry I had once striven to achieve." During this period, Renoir produced around fifty paintings, as many gouaches and a large number of drawings, including La fleur du mal, a tribute to Baudelaire.

For the painter, it was a question of reforming Surrealism: in October 1946, Magritte sent André Breton his Manifesto for a Surrealism in Full Sunlight, which was rejected. After this, the painter decided to embark on a series of grotesque portraits.