In 1967, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam organized a retrospective dedicated to the Belgian artist René Magritte. Photographer Lothar Wolleh travelled to Brussels several times during that year to visit the Magritte family ahead of the exhibition.

Wolleh’s photographs paint an intimate portrait of René Magritte’s domestic life and artistic practice. The images depicting Magritte interacting with his paintings are particularly important, not least because of their enigmatic character. Magritte’s works have become part of our collective memory, and to this day, Wolleh’s black-and-white and colour photographs from that year continue to contribute to this collective memory.

Magritte died shortly after the exhibition opened, a fact that lends these photographs an even higher value – while allowing Magritte himself to have the last word.