1. Casino Knokke Heist
2. Rene Magritte Casino Knokke En

Acquired in the early 1930s possibly in 1932 – until 1966. (On loan to Casino de Knokke, Belgium, from 1962 to 1965.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Mesens with the Kay Sage Tanguy Fund, 1966. Provenance research is a work in progress,. Magritte started to work in 1952 and the fresco was finished before easter 1953, just before the summer exhibition of Max Ernst. 3 times a week Magritte travelled by train to Knokke-Heist to direct the team of 4 painters and to check how they progressed. The fresco was painted in the former small gaming room of the Casino of Knokke, where the. With the arrival of the 1950s, Magritte enjoyed ongoing international interest in his work and continued his prolific output. In 1951 he was commissioned to paint a cycle of murals for the casino at Knocke-le-Zoute, a town on the Belgian coast. Classic casino in Knokke. Clean and crisp. The restaurant Mascotte is fantastic. All staff is very friendly. That the toilets are not for free is always for me not acceptable, specialy when you spend the whole evening in restaurant, you buy drinks and play at the casino. The Magritte room is a must as is the largest Morano Chandelier ever. Knokke’s reason for adopting Magritte lies in the town’s casino. In 1952 and ’53, Magritte oversaw the production of a massive mural called “The Enchanted Realm”, which reprises many of his most famous themes. Wrapping around the walls of the casino’s circular gaming room, it is arguably the world’s biggest Magritte.

Date:

1937

Artist:

René Magritte
Belgian, 1898–1967

About this artwork

In 1937 René Magritte completed a series of four paintings, titled The White Race, in which he depicted composite faces assembled entirely from disjointed body parts, “put together in a very unusual order.” A fervent critic of fascism, Magritte aimed these discomforting portrayals of human anatomy at the cult of bodily perfection then prominent in Nazi-sanctioned art and propaganda. The last of the series, this version is the only painting to position the startling face atop a body, unsettling the well-known art historical type of the bathing female nude. When it was exhibited in 1938, amid the widespread condemnation of “degenerate art” in Germany, the painting’s owner expressed support of Magritte, writing that “the distorted forms … challenge us and demand our attention through their disintegration.”

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Casino Knokke Heist

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Extended information about this artwork

• The Sketch (Jan. 26, 1938), p. 173 (installation photograph of Paris 1938).
• The Sketch (Dec. 2, 1953), p. 567 (ill.).
• Yves Bossut, Gilles Brenta, Marcel Broodthaers, et al., La Partie fondue de l’iceberg (Brussels: Les Lèvres nues, 1979), p. 85 (ill.).
• Terry Ann R. Neff, ed., In the Mind’s Eye: Dada and Surrealism (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986), pp. 167 (ill.) and 168.
• David Sylvester, Magritte: The Silence of the World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 153 (ill.) and 345.
• David Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, v. 2 (Houston: The Menil Foundation, 1993), no. 445, pp. 251 (ill.) and 252.

• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Trois peintres surrealists: René Magritte, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, Dec. 11–22, 1937, cat. 16.
• Paris, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Jan.–Feb. 1938, cat. 111.
• Les Compagnons de l’art, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, June – Aug. 1938, cat. 111.
• Knokke, Casino Communal, Ve Festival Belge d’Eté, Aug. 2–22, 1952, cat. 18.
• London, The Lefevre Gallery, René Magritte, Nov. 1953, cat. 15, as La Race Blanche (IV).
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, René Magritte, May 7–June 1, 1954, cat. 58
• Antwerp, Zaal C.A.W., De vier hoofdpunten van het Surrealisme, Apr. 15–26, 1956, cat. 27, as La race blanche (IV).
• Chicago, The Renaissance Society, Magritte, Mar. 1–Apr. 10, 1964, cat. 3.
• Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Dada and Surrealism in Chicago Collections, Dec. 1, 1984–Jan. 27, 1985.
• London, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Rene Magritte, cat. 78; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 9–Nov. 22, 1992; Houston, Menil Collection, Dec. 15, 1992–Feb. 21, 1993; Chicago, Art Institute, Mar. 16–May 30, 1993 [Chicago only].
• New York, Museum of Modern Art, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, Sept. 28, 2013-Jan. 12, 2014, cat. 119; Houston, The Menil Collection, Feb. 14-June 1, 2014; Chicago, Art Institute, June 24-Oct. 13, 2014.

E.L.T. Mesens, c. 1938–39 [this and the following according to Sylvester 1992]; sold to Marc Hendrickx, Brussels, by 1954. Sold through Hanover Gallery, London, to Leonard J. and Ruth P. Horwich, Chicago, May 1960 [Chicago 1964]; the Leonard and Ruth Horwich Family Foundation; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014.

Rene Magritte Casino Knokke En

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