📍135 Rue Esseghem, 1090 Jette, Brussels, Belgium
1930 – 1954“I grew up in the industrial towns of Hainaut — Lessines, Châtelet, Charleroi — and when I was thirteen my mother was found drowned in the River Sambre; it is something I rarely spoke of, but faces veiled in cloth appear again and again in my paintings. In 1930, after a few years among the Surrealists in Paris, Georgette and I came home to Brussels and rented the ground-floor flat at 135 Rue Esseghem in Jette, an ordinary terraced street in an ordinary suburb. We lived there for twenty-four years. I painted around half of all my works in that flat — often in the dining room, in my suit and tie — and kept a small studio in the garden I jokingly named Dongo. Georgette had her piano; some of the furniture I designed myself. The Brussels surrealists regularly crowded in to argue, play games and write manifestos. Nothing about my life looked strange — only my paintings. The flat has been restored with our own furniture and is now the René Magritte Museum.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today