Matteson Art

 

The Belgian Surrealists

On the left column are biographies and information about some of the significant Belgian surrealists.


“Le rendez-vous de chasse“, Bruxelles, 1934.

[Sitting from left to right: Irène Hamoir, Marthe Beauvoisin, Georgette Magritte. Standing from left to right: E.L.T. Mesens, René Magritte, Louis Scutenaire, André Souris, Paul Nougé]

Belgian Surrealism emerged with the publication of Correspondance in 1924, the same year as Breton's First Manifesto. The periodical was printed on different colored fliers and featured critiques of many of the French Surrealists' writing & philosophies. Other periodicals published by the group during the 1920s included Osophage, Marie and Distance.

The Belgian Surrealist group featured, among others, E.L.T. Mesens, Paul Nouge, Rene Magritte, Camille Goemans, Marcel Lecomte and, a bit later, Marcel Marien.

Several members of the Belgian Group interacted and collaborated with the French Surrealists. In fact, both Nouge and Magritte are featured in the famous 1929 photomontage of the French Surrealist members with their eyes closed, printed that year in Le Revolution Surrealiste. Here's a great photo of the Brussels surrealist gang taken in Brussels twenty years later:



Le café La Fleur (55 rue des Alexiens 1000 Bruxelles) March 1953. From left to right: Marcel Mariën, Camille Goemans, Gérard Van Bruaene, Irène Hamoir,  Georgette Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens, Louis Scutenaire, René Magritte and Paul Colinet.