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50 free Rene Magritte trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
René Magritte dressed like a bank clerk, lived in a Brussels suburb, and painted a pipe that was not a pipe, a locomotive charging out of a fireplace, and a man whose face is an apple. He also forged Picassos and banknotes to survive the postwar years, and Belgium later put him on a real 500-franc note. These 50 questions cover the life and the images: the mother drowned in the Sambre, the de Chirico reproduction that made him weep, the wallpaper factory and the poster work, the Paris years with Breton, the Communist Party and the Spaak stipend, Edward James's London home, the Renoir and Vache periods, and the theft of Olympia from his own house museum. You will get The Treachery of Images, The Son of Man, Golconda's parachutists, the 27 Empires of Light, Time Transfixed and its dagger title, The Lovers, and the long tail of borrowings from the Apple Corps logo to The Exorcist poster. Easy questions cover pipes and apples; the hard tier asks about Emair, Marcel Mariën, Rue Esseghem and Degouve de Nuncques. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was René Magritte born?
Belgium
He was born in Lessines, Hainaut, and spent most of his career in Brussels.
Q 02What does the French caption of The Treachery of Images say?
This is not a pipe
Magritte's defence: just try to fill it with tobacco.
Q 03What hides the face of the bowler-hatted man in The Son of Man?
A green apple
It is a self-portrait; his left arm appears to bend backwards at the elbow.
Q 04In which US city is The Treachery of Images displayed?
Los Angeles
Breton and Éluard joked 'Poetry is a pipe' in La Révolution surréaliste in 1929.
Q 05What hat do the identical falling men wear in Golconda?
Bowler hats
Photographs of WWI parachutists inspired the 1953 lattice of floating men.
Q 06Which Houston institution owns Golconda?
Menil Collection
John and Dominique de Menil funded the five-volume Magritte catalogue raisonné.
Q 07What is paradoxical about the scenes in The Empire of Light series?
Night street under a daylight sky
He made 27 versions, 17 in oil and 10 in gouache, never planned as a formal series.
Q 08How many versions of The Empire of Light did Magritte make?
27
They have never all been shown together.
Q 09What covers the faces of the kissing couple in The Lovers (1928)?
White cloth
Some link it to his mother's drowned body found with her dress over her face.
Q 10Which river did Magritte's mother drown herself in, in 1912?
Sambre
Her body was found 16 days later; the story that the boy saw it retrieved has been discredited.
Q 11Which de Chirico painting moved Magritte to tears in 1922?
The Song of Love
He said 'my eyes saw thought for the first time'.
Q 12What was Magritte's first surreal painting, made in 1926?
The Lost Jockey
A contract with Galerie Le Centaure let him paint full-time that year.
Q 13Where did Magritte work as a draughtsman in 1922–23?
A wallpaper factory
He designed posters and ads until 1926.
Q 14Whom did Magritte marry in 1922, having first met her as a child in 1913?
Q 21Which British patron let Magritte stay rent-free in his London home?
Edward James
He appears in The Pleasure Principle and Not to Be Reproduced, both 1937.
Q 22What bursts from a fireplace in Time Transfixed?
A steam locomotive
Magritte wanted it hung where the train would 'stab' guests climbing to the ballroom.
Q 23Which US city's Art Institute bought Time Transfixed from its first owner in 1970?
Chicago
James was raising money for his Las Pozas sculpture garden in Mexico.
What does the French title La durée poignardée literally mean?
Georgette Berger
A butcher's daughter from Charleroi, she became his model and muse.
Q 15After a failed 1927 Brussels show, Magritte moved where to join the Surrealists?
Paris
He befriended André Breton and stayed three years.
Q 16With which two artists was Magritte put under contract at Goemans Gallery in 1929?
Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy
Galerie Le Centaure closed the same year, ending his income.
Q 17What was the title of Magritte's 1929 essay in La Révolution surréaliste?
Les mots et les images
It appeared in the last issue, No. 12, playing words against images.
Q 18Which political movement did Magritte join in 1932, leaving and rejoining over the years?
Communism
He still wanted 'mental luxury' for workers, not just bread and water.
Q 19Which playwright arranged a monthly stipend for Magritte in the early 1930s?
Claude Spaak
Between 1930 and 1932 Magritte sold no work at all.
Q 20Under what pseudonym did Magritte draw film posters for Tobis Klangfilm in 1934–37?
Emair
Seven of the posters survive in the Leuven City Archive.
Ongoing time stabbed by a dagger
Magritte disliked the accepted English title Time Transfixed.
Q 25What is Magritte's colourful 1943–44 wartime interlude called?
Renoir period
It was a reaction to alienation under German occupation; the crude Fauve 'Vache' phase came in 1947–48.
Q 26What did Magritte forge to get by in the lean postwar years, besides fake Picassos?
Banknotes
Belgium later put him on a real 500-franc note for his centenary.
Q 27Which 1946 manifesto did Magritte sign, renouncing violence and pessimism?
Surrealism in Full Sunlight
His 'Vache period' of crude Fauve-style painting followed in 1947–48.
Q 28Whose Portrait of Madame Récamier did Magritte remake with a coffin in Perspective I?
David
Perspective II does the same to Manet's The Balcony.
Q 29Which recurring object in The Human Condition lets Magritte question representation?
An easel
The canvas shows exactly the view it hides, eliminating inside and outside.
Q 30Which Beatles company logo of 1968 was inspired by Magritte's Le Jeu de Mourre?
Apple Corps
The 1966 painting shows a large green apple.