Russia (bbabo.net), - For the first time, the painting "Empire of Light" by Rene Magritte will appear at an auction at Sotheby's. The starting price is $ 60 million. Bidding is scheduled for March 2.

The painting was painted in 1961 for Baroness Anne-Marie Gillon Crovet, and since then has not left the family meeting. The painting has repeatedly participated in exhibitions in Brussels, Rome, Paris, Vienna, Milan, Seoul, Edinburgh and San Francisco, and from 2009 to 2020 was at the Magritte Museum in Brussels.

Anne-Marie was the artist's muse. Magritte first met her when she was only sixteen. From the very first meeting between the creator and his muse, a strong friendship struck up: Magritte sent his small drawings to the Baroness and showed fresh paintings, one of which he presented as a.jpgt on the occasion of the birth of her daughter. Anne-Marie was married. Magritte with his wife Georgette and Anne-Marie with her husband Roland (by the way, both are famous collectors who donated their collection to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts) loved to spend time together - they played chess in his favorite bistro, and in the evenings they watched Charlie Chaplin's films and Buster Keaton.

Magritte probably borrowed the plot for one of his most mysterious paintings from André Breton's poem "Heron", which he knew well and which begins with the words: "If the sun came out tonight." The almost unreal combination of a dark night street and a bright blue sky is one of the disturbing surreal images characteristic of Magritte's work. Although the canvas depicts a very real street next to the Brussels park Jehoshaphat, not far from which the artist settled in 1954.

bbabo.Net