The Magritte Museum, Brussels

The Magritte Museum, devoted to Belgium’s most important Surrealist, opened in Brussels in 2009. This visitor’s guide, updated to mark the museum’s fifth anniversary, offers an excellent overview of what it has to offer. The permanent collection is comprehensively described and explained based on the thirty most important paintings by Magritte, with attention also focused on loan works and items on temporary display. The guide matches the circuit followed by visitors to the museum, but also looks in greater depth at less well-known aspects of the artist's life and work: his relationship with film, for instance, and how he initially earned his living as an illustrator of musical scores and advertising posters. The explanatory notes are written in clear language, while also leaving room for the mystery inherent to the works of this Surrealist master.