This vibrant and colorful fuchsia melamine Rene Magritte Tray Golgonda (Green) features his notorious surrealist work “Golconda” (1953) where the Belgian surrealist artist represents a background with buildings and blue sky as a background, where there are nearly identical men in bowler hats and overcoats as in his work Son of Man receding in a grid-like manner through the various picture-planes of the composition. The identical men appear to be floating like helium balloons or drops of rain, although no motion is suggested by the artist in the rendering of the repeated bowler hat and overcoat men.
René Magritte was one of the most famous surrealist painters of all time. His ability to challenge perception inspired many artists to come, such as Andy Warhol, Jan Verdoodt and Jasper Johns. Furthermore, his idiosyncratic vision of Surrealism has won over the hearts and minds of millions.
He worked across various media including painting, printmaking, sculpting, photography, and film. His depiction of normal, everyday objects rearranged in an unusual way allowed his viewers to take a deeper look at what was in front of them and realize what the image truly represented.
One of his most well-known pieces, The Treachery of Images exemplifies his ability to give new meanings to objects. It is an image of a pipe, and beneath it, a message that reads, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”).
This ability to make the mundane strange and the known unknown has solidified Magritte’s talents in the art world. Eventually, it has profoundly affected the Conceptualist and Pop Art movements, to this very day.
