Collective Invention Female Fish Statue by Magritte 6W
PN# MAG03The Collective Invention / l'Invention collective was a Surrealist painting completed by Rene Magritte (1935, oil on canvas 73 x 166 cm). This clever artwork is an adaptation of the painting into a statue. It shows a woman's body laying down with a fish as the upper portion of her body. The combination of the human and fish forms is a physical impossibility, only possible in a dream. Surrealism was a 20th century art movement which mixed improbably dreamlike images as a way to challenge a viewer's understanding of the natural world.
Magritte describes this work as follows: Collective Invention is the answer to the problem of the sea. On the beach I laid a siren, the top part of whose body is that of a fish, while the bottom part consists of the belly and legs of a woman.
Collective Invention Female Fish Statue details:
- part of the Parastone Museum Collection of collectible figurines
- made from resin with hand painted details
- Included color card with image of the original painting and a description of the artist.
- Measures: 1.5 inches H x 6 inches W. Weight 0.5 lbs.
Rene Magritte (1898-1967) was born in Lessines near Tournai in French speaking Belgium in 1898. He spent his childhood in Chatelet and Charleroi. He attended the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918. There he met the brothers Victor and Pierre Bourgeois and the painter Pierre-Louis Flouquet. In 1919 Magritte contributed to the first issue of the review Au Volant published by the Bourgeois brothers. After a year of military service he worked as a designer, first of all for a wallpaper manufacturer in Brussels and then as a freelance designer of posters, publicity materials and exhibition stands. He painted his first acclaimed Surrealist painting, The Last Jockey, in 1926 and in the same year, along with the other Belgian surrealists, signed the declamatory leaflets Two Disgraces and the Married Couple of the Eiffel Tower. Between 1927 and 1930 Magritte lived in Le Perreux-sur-Marne near Paris, during which time he became acquainted with Hans Arp, Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard and Joan Miro. Magritte's provocative essay Words and Pictures was published in the last issue of La Revolution Surrealiste in 1929, a year after he painted The Empty Mask.