The View, 1931

The View by René Magritte is among the artist’s works made shortly after arriving back in Brussels after his Paris years. His years in the French capital came to an end due in part to his complex relationship with surrealist figurehead André Breton. He moved to a studio in Jette, and the subsequent years would be among the most prolific in his career.

The View combines a variety of motifs that appear throughout the artist’s oeuvre, such as the brick wall, a wooden décor, a view though something, the sky and the free-floating bell, which provides a strange spiritualist and slightly synaesthetic atmosphere. The spheres are called ‘grelots’ and represent the bells that horses wore around their necks during Magritte’s childhood.