Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte, Belgian surrealist artist, born 21 November 1898 in Lessines, Belgium died 15 August 1967 in Brussels, Belgium.
He was well known for creating gritty and thought-provoking images challenging observers preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced Pop Art, Minimalist and Conceptual Art.
‘The False Mirror’ (1928) depicts an enormous lash-less eye with a luminous cloud-filled blue sky filling the iris and the pupil represented by an opaque black disc. The eye is not in its natural position but at the centre of the eye. Magritte’s eye functions on multiple enigmatic levels: the viewer both looks through it, as though a window, and is looked at by it, thus seeing and being seen simultaneously.
