Drifting with Magritte: Castles in the Air

One of the best-known and most beloved artworks in the Israel Museum is René Magritte’s Castle in the Pyrenees, which the Belgian Surrealist artist painted in 1959 and which was gifted to the Museum by the art-lover who commissioned it, Harry Torczyner. This beautifully illustrated publication focuses on that mysterious, mesmerizing portrayal: an enormous rock, topped by a petrified castle, floating in mid-air above the sea. It presents the evolution of Magritte’s “stone age” through related paintings and also unfolds the story of how The Castle of the Pyrenees came into being, as attested by a lively correspondence between Magritte and Torczyner. The artist’s life is illumined by a brief survey of biographical highlights, illustrated by archival photographs. In addition to these texts by Israel Museum Curator of Modern Art Efrat Aharon, an essay by art historian Michel Draguet, Director of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, discusses Magritte’s early artistic and philosophical development vis-à-vis Surrealism.