THE BELGIAN SURREALISTS

Belgian Surrealism emerged with the publication of Correspondance in 1924, the same year as Breton's First Manifesto. The periodical was printed on different colored fliers and featured critiques of many of the French Surrealists' writing & philosophies. Other periodicals published by the group during the 1920s included Osophage, Marie and Distance.

The Belgian Surrealist group featured, among others, E.L.T. Mesens, Paul Nouge, Rene Magritte, Camille Goemans, Marcel Lecomte and, a bit later, Marcel Marien.

Several members of the Belgian Group interacted and collaborated with the French Surrealists. In fact, both Nouge and Magritte are featured in the famous 1929 photomontage of the French Surrealist members with their eyes closed, printed that year in Le Revolution Surrealiste.

Click here to read the article The Forgotten Surrealists: Belgian Surrealism Since 1924.

You can also read an article on E.L.T. Mesens by clicking here, or the article Strategies of Fame: The anonymous career of a Belgian surrealist by clicking here .


Above: The Belgian Surrealist group, including E.L.T. Mesens, Rene Magritte
& Paul Nouge.
 
Above: Two collages by E.L.T. Mesens.  Below: Two paintings by Rene Magritte.
 
Below: Photographs by Marcel Marien, inspired by the imagery of Magritte.
 
 

The Understanding of Nature
from Optics Unveiled (1924)
by Paul Nouge

     The keyhole projects a ray across this nocturnal darkness.  On a table whose form one can just make out, a bottle becomes evident.  The bottle lights up vividly and one can see the sparkling of the liquid; it is a blue liquid.
     The bottle and the light are alone on the table.
     The light merges curiously with the blue water in the midst of an incomparable silence.  Then a patch of brightness, a patch veined with red, reveals the wall.  Its form is not fixed; it shifts; it could be a changing face.  Objects slowly emerge: three roses, a smashed-open wardrobe, a hanging dress, a coat standing out against nothingness.  Finally a charming young woman in a low-cut dress who is supervising the experiment and who is holding in her hand, at the end of a hair, a little ball of elder-pith.

Translated by Iain White   
 
   
Left to right: Portrait of Paul Nouge, painted by Magritte; E.L.T. Mesens; Rene Magritte; and Marcel Marien.