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David Sylvester, well known for his studies of Henry Moore, Picasso and Francis Bacon, was the curator of several exhibitions of the work of Rene Magritte, including the widely acclaimed retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1969, and he earned a reputation as the foremost expert on Magritte's work. In a departure from critical methods that had previously been applied, he gave preference to precise fact-finding and documentary evidence rather than commentary or interpretation of the works. His magisterial monograph, made up of more than forty chapters and as many clues to Magritte's puzzles, provides an overview, firmly grounded in art history, that places Rene Magritte in the context of Surrealism and the art of the twentieth century. It takes full advantage of the significant discoveries published in the catalogue raisonne of the artist, of which Sylvester was also the editor, issued in 5 volumes by the same publishers, and indeed of the twenty-five years of research supported by the Menil Foundation. David Sylvester's monumental work was the first and only publication to provide an assessment of the incredible creativity of the painter, whose astonishing poetic invention was undoubtedly the most fertile in international Surrealism. Since the first appearance of the catalogue raisonne the submerged part of the Magrittean iceberg and of the present monograph the visible and universally accessible part of the iceberg Magritte's reputation has soared in the market for modern art, and he has taken his place among the most highly esteemed artists of the twentieth century.

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9789061538561

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The late David Sylvester was the curator of several exhibitions of the work of René Magritte, including the widely acclaimed retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1969, and he earned a reputation as the foremost expert of Magritte's work. Michel Draguet is Director of the Magritte Museum in Brussels.

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