Rene Magritte was born on November 21,1898 in the town of Lessines in southern Belgium, near Brussels. He was the oldest of three brothers. He began taking art lessons at the age of twelve. Between 1916 and 1921 he was enrolled at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels, but he attended classes only occasionally. He had some published drawings, some advertising posters, a stint as a designer at a wallpaper factory and another doing freelance publicity work for a fashion house. He had toyed with Dada, Futurism and Cubism; he had designed magazine covers and stage sets and written song lyrics.

When he was only fourteen, Magritte woke one night to find his mother missing. He and his brothers searched the neighborhood and found h...