René Magritte is the biggest Magritte archive anywhere and most of the work is directly from the collection of the artist's widow, Georgette Magritte, and from Irene Hamoir Scutenaire, who was his primary collector. Additionally, the museum includes Magritte's experiments with photography from 1920 on and the short surrealist films he made from 1956 on. Another museum is located at 135 Rue Esseghem in Brussels in Magritte's former home, where he lived with his wife from 1930 to 1954. A painting, "Olympia" (1948), a nude portrait of Magritte's wife by Magritte, was stolen from this museum on the morning of 24 September
Surrealist automatism Surrealist automatism Surrealist automatism is a method of art-making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have great sway. Early 20th-century Dadaists, such as Hans Arp, made some use of this method through chance operations. Surrealist artists, most notably André Masson, adapted to art the automatic writing method of André Breton and Philippe Soupault who composed with it "Les Champs Magnétiques" (The Magnetic Fields) in 1919. "The Automatic Message" (1933) was one of Breton's significant theoretical works about automatism. Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially