The KMSKA looks through the eyes of the master in its new exhibition Magritte. La ligne de vie
In a unique lecture at the KMSKA in 1938, René Magritte explained how he arrived at his iconic visual language. Almost ninety years later, the exhibition Magritte. La ligne de vie (15.11.2025 – 22.02.2026) will bring this extraordinary presentation back to life. Guided by Magritte's own words, the exhibition shows the artist at his most personal and introspective.
In the course of his life, the Belgian surrealist spoke publicly about his work only three times. Of these, the lecture at the KMSKA was the most comprehensive. It offers a unique insight into his thinking and marked an important turning point in his career.
What makes this exhibition so special is that visitors get to know Magritte’s work through his own words and voice. Thanks to AI technology, we can recreate the original 1938 lecture in the museum. We will be displaying the works he is referring to. You cannot get any closer to Magritte than this.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Comrades
In his lecture, Magritte explains how he developed his famous paintings one step at a time. He begins with a childhood recollection: the moment he discovered the magic of painting. That sensation will never leave him. His entire career is a quest to understand that mystery. It takes him from Futurist abstraction to flat figuration, culminating in his famous experiments with image, language and unexpected, enigmatic combinations. Magritte also explains how he classifies his paintings according to recurring questions or “problems”: the problem of the door, of the window, the woman, etc. These clusters reappear in the exhibition.
In the exhibition, visitors will discover how Magritte developed his famous visual language step by step. His lecture shows that this was not a straight path, but a genuine quest and even a struggle with his themes. The selection of works we are showing reveals the questions that kept troubling him and the motifs that recurred time and again: the apple, the clouds, the vistas, the cup and ball toys, and so on.'
Surrealism as a strategy
A striking element of the lecture is its distinctly political tone. On the eve of World War II, Magritte is well aware of the turbulent times he is living in. For Magritte, surrealism is a strategy to expose the absurdity of that political tension. After all, the original surrealist movement was rooted in deeply political and anti-bourgeois ideology. Surrealist art was provocative, experimental and imbued with humour.
A dialogue between image and word
Magritte. La ligne de vie brings together works from throughout his career and demonstrates how decisive his 1938 lecture was. Because Magritte rarely spoke about his own work, that lecture turned out to be a rare moment of self-reflection. Through the discourse, Magritte analysed his artistic process with unprecedented clarity. For today's audience, this offers a unique opportunity to experience his thinking from within.
With Magritte. La ligne de vie, we wanted to create not just an ordinary exhibition, but a poetic dialogue between image and word. Once more, his voice echoes among his works, and the words of his 1938 lecture reveal the thinking behind those images. This allows visitors to enter Magritte's mind, as it were, at a crucial moment in his career, just before the Second World War.
The spark in Antwerp
Magritte's lecture marks a turning point not only in his own career, but also in the Antwerp art world. The lecture is initially received with mixed reactions, but it sows an important seed. Young artists such as Marcel Mariën, Gilbert Senecaut, Roger Van de Wouwer and Léo Dohmen feel themselves addressed by his words. Inspired by Magritte, they set to work with collages, photography, poetry, provocation and alienating combinations of images. Thus they establish the basis for Antwerp surrealism, building on Magritte's surrealism. In its final chapter, Magritte. La ligne de vie shows a selection of works by artists from this Scheldt - Scaldese group.
It is significant that Magritte gave the most iconic lecture of his career in Antwerp. A year earlier, he had met 17-year-old Antwerp native Marcel Mariën. That meeting provided the spark that ignited mutual enthusiasm. Together with artists such as Léo Dohmen, Gilbert Senecaut and Roger Van de Wouwer, Mariën would later become the driving force behind Antwerp surrealism.
