1. His mother’s suicide played a pivotal role in his early work
René François Ghislain Magritte was born in Lessines, Belgium at the end of 1898, the eldest of three sons in a manufacturing family. His relatively uneventful early childhood took a turn for the tragic when his mother, who had long struggled with her mental health, committed suicide by drowning herself in a nearby river. At the story goes, the then 14-year-old Magritte was present when she was pulled from…