The Eye

1932/35

René Magritte
Belgian, 1898–1967

Status: On View, Gallery 396
Department: Modern Art

Artist: René Magritte
Title: The Eye
Place: Belgium (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1932–1935
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: none
Dimensions: 27 × 24.8 × 14.4 cm (10 1/2 × 10 × 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior gift of Arthur Keating
Reference Number: 1989.53
Copyright: © 2018 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Amei Wallach, “An Eye-Catching Magritte,” New York Newsday, September 11, 1992, p. 94.
David Sylvester, Magritte: The Silence of the World (Houston and New York, 1992), pp. 193-94, 337.
David Sylvester, ed., René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 2 (Houston and London, 1993), p. 432, fig. 686.
Magritte A bis Z, ed. Christoph Grunrmberg and Darren Pih, Exh. cat. (Alberina Publishing, 2012), p. 8, p. 25, ill. 26, p. 259.
Magritte A to Z, ed. Christoph Grunenberg and Darren Pih, Exh. cat. (Tate Publishing, 2012), p. 65, (ill.), p.195 p. 204.
M. Therese Southgate, “The Cover,” Journal of the American Medical Association 272, no. 2 (13 July 1994), p. 90 (ill.).
Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, ed. Anne Umland, Exh. cat. (The Museum of Modern Art, 2013), ill. 188.
Stephanie D’Alessandro and Renée DeVoe Mertz, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2014), 124 (color ill.).

London, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Rene Magritte, May 21–August 2, 1992, no. 155; traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 9–November 22, 1992, Houston, Menil Collection, December 15, 1992–February 21, 1993, and Art Institute of Chicago, March 16–May 30, 1993.
Mexico City, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, René Magritte, Mar. 18-July 11, 2012.
Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle, June 24, 2011-Febuary 26, 2012.
Tokyo, National Art Center of Tokyo, René Magritte: The Search for the Absolute, Mar. 25–June 29, 2015; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, July 11–Oct. 12, 2015
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, September 28, 2013-January 12, 2014, no. 110; traveled to Houston, The Menil Collection, February 14-June 1, 2014, and Chicago, Art Institute, June 24-October 13, 2014.

The artist; sold to Paul Gustave Van Hecke (1887-1977), by 1944–c. 1950 [photograph by Lee Miller of the object in Van Hecke home, 1944; this and the following according to provenance card, c. 1987, Menil Collection Archives]; given to Private Collection, Belgium, c. 1950 [letter from Bernard Giron, May 4, 2003, in curatorial file]. Private collection, New York, c. 1987. Timothy Baum, New York; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1989.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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