Belgium and Luxembourg (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

70 BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG REGION BY REGION

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts: Musée

Magritte and Musée d’Art Moderne

The Musée Magritte gives unprecedented insight
into the life and works of one of Belgium’s most cele-
brated painters, René Magritte, a major exponent of
Surrealism. Stretching over five floors, the museum
occupies a refurbished Neo-Classical building on the
Place Royale. Next to it is the Musée d’Art Moderne,
laid out in the 1980s over three storeys and six spiral-
ling levels, all ingeniously sunk into the ground to
avoid obscuring the 18th-century Place du Musée. This
museum holds mainly Belgian art from the mid-19th and
20th centuries, with some international contemporary
art repre sented on the lowest level. A D-shaped light-
well allows visitors to view the exhibits by natural
light, in spite of the building’s location underground.

. The Domain
of Arnheim (1962)
Magritte’s painting of
an eagle-mountain
rearing over a small
bird’s nest, precari-
ously perched on a
wall, is an unsettling
image that teases the
viewer for an explana-
tion. The title is from
a short story by Edgar
Allan Poe (1809–49).

Portrait of Baron Francis Delbeke (1917)
Antwerp-born Jules Schmalzigaug (1882–1917)
was one of the most original and gifted artists of his
generation. He was involved in the Italian Futurist
movement in Rome between 1912 and 1914, and
his work became increasingly abstract. He moved to
the neutral Netherlands at the advent of World War I,
where, depressed, he took his own life at the age of 35.

STAR PAINTINGS

. The Domain
of Arnheim
. Woman in a Blue Dress
in Front of a Mirror

Level -2

Level -1

Level 2

Level 1

Level 3

Level 4

To Musée

d’Art Ancien

To Musée

d’Art Moderne