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Lot Essay
An unearthly creature, reminiscent of the demons of Hieronymous Bosch, lies below a jagged, almost Damoclean cloak. This is nothing recognisable to the viewer's consciousness - it is a nightmare vision from some otherworldly recess of the mind. The haunting image of La nourriture de l'ennemi bears rare testimony to the very beginnings of Magritte's Surrealist journey. Although Magritte had already been linked to the Surrealists and had made several paintings showing the heavy influence of Giorgio de Chirico - whose work had first inspired him to join the Surrealists - La nourriture de l'ennemi is one of Magritte's earliest venturings into less travelled, more personal territories. Magritte had not yet developed the distinctive iconographic vocabulary he would repeatedly use throughout his later artistic career, but was still searching for his particular 'voice'. In 1925, he had painted his first Surrealist work, La fenêtre - considered his first picture. Executed the following year, in 1926, La nourriture de l'ennemi dates from Magritte's formative period and is heavily imbued with the influence of the Parisian strand of Surrealism. It was only later in the early 1930s, after a rift developed between Magritte and André Breton, that Belgian Surrealism grew to become a distinctly separate entity from its French counterpart.
One of the artists whose work most clearly left its mark on Magritte's earlier Surrealist paintings was Max Ernst, whose collages are visibly echoed in his work. It is therefore not surprising to find that the creature in La nourriture de l'ennemi bears a close resemblance to the mural Ernst painted in Paul Eluard's house in Eaubonne four years earlier. Ernst's mural had been illustrated in Bulletin de l'effort moderne and may well have been actively adopted by Magritte.
La nourriture de l'ennemi was owned for some time by E.L.T. Mesens, Magritte's great friend and collaborator in Belgian Surrealism, and was acquired from him by Raymond, the artist's brother. Although Mesens and Magritte were the vanguard of Belgian Surrealism, nonetheless their friendship and collaboration stretched back to Magritte's dalliance with Futurism. This painting is therefore importantly related both to the style and the protagonists of early Belgian Surrealism.
One of the artists whose work most clearly left its mark on Magritte's earlier Surrealist paintings was Max Ernst, whose collages are visibly echoed in his work. It is therefore not surprising to find that the creature in La nourriture de l'ennemi bears a close resemblance to the mural Ernst painted in Paul Eluard's house in Eaubonne four years earlier. Ernst's mural had been illustrated in Bulletin de l'effort moderne and may well have been actively adopted by Magritte.
La nourriture de l'ennemi was owned for some time by E.L.T. Mesens, Magritte's great friend and collaborator in Belgian Surrealism, and was acquired from him by Raymond, the artist's brother. Although Mesens and Magritte were the vanguard of Belgian Surrealism, nonetheless their friendship and collaboration stretched back to Magritte's dalliance with Futurism. This painting is therefore importantly related both to the style and the protagonists of early Belgian Surrealism.