Contemporary art

René Magritte - La Trahison des images

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CHF 1,200.00
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René Magritte

La Trahison des images

Color lithograph after the 1929 oil on canvas by René Magritte, plate-signed by Magritte and numbered from the edition of 275.

cm 45 x 60

printed in 2010 on BFK Rives 300 g/m² paper, hand made in the Arches paper mill in the Vosges region. 


This work includes a certificate of authenticity by the original printers & publishers. The lithograph features the dry stamps of the Magritte Foundation & ADAGP and is countersigned in pencil by Mr. Charly Herscovici, President of the Magritte Foundation, Chairman of the Magritte Museum and unique representative of the Magritte Succession. A proof of edition is printed on the back of the lithograph, guaranteeing its authenticity.


Magritte’s most famous work, "La Trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)", from 1929, linked Magritte’s art to important philosophies of representation. The artist painted a brown-and-black tobacco pipe above words that, in English, mean “this is not a pipe.” The canvas highlights the fact that the viewer isn’t looking at a pipe, but a picture of a pipe. Far from a petty provocation, the distinction gets at the difference between art and reality. As curator Caitlin Haskell writes “Magritte, more than any other artist of the past century, made it his project to subvert our faith in visual similitude.” He lived through violent periods that inspired many Europeans to question their governments, religion, and human decency; his artwork similarly asks viewers to reevaluate their acceptance of what they see. As rapidly improving technology amplifies our ability to realistically distort images, it’s more important than ever to consider what is a pipe, and what’s not.

John Baldessarri on The Treachery of Images and René Magritte

"Who would dare to claim that the image of a pipe is a pipe?
Who could smoke the pipe in my painting? No one. So, it's not a pipe."
- R. Magritte