Rene Magritte
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49 free Rene Magritte trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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 49 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was René Magritte born?
Belgium
Belgium: born in Lessines, he spent three years among the Surrealists abroad, then came home for good, choosing a quiet middle-class life over a bohemian one.
Q 02What does the French caption on Magritte's The Treachery of Images say, in English?
This is not a pipe
This is not a pipe: Magritte's defence was that nobody could stuff it with tobacco, so writing 'This is a pipe' would have been a lie.
Q 03In Magritte's The Son of Man, what hovers in front of the man's face?
A green apple
A green apple: it is one of the few pictures Magritte meant as a self-portrait, and he painted it with his own face hidden.
Q 04In which US city is Magritte's The Treachery of Images on display?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles: its county museum, LACMA, named a whole 2006 exhibition after the painting, tracing its pull on later artists such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.
Q 05What hat do the dozens of floating men wear in Magritte's Golconda?
Bowler hats
Bowler hats: Magritte wore one himself as the uniform of the anonymous middle-class man, only for it to become his personal trademark.
Q 06Which Houston institution owns Magritte's Golconda?
Menil Collection
Menil Collection: its founders, John and Dominique de Menil, were such devoted collectors that their foundation paid for the complete catalogue of his work.
Q 07What is paradoxical about the scenes in Magritte's The Empire of Light paintings?
Night street under a daylight sky
Night street under a daylight sky: the swap makes the bright sky, normally reassuring, the unsettling part, and the darkness below seems deeper for it.
Q 08Who bought the Empire of Light Magritte showed in Venice?
Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim: several collectors had expected to buy the same canvas at the 1954 Biennale, so Magritte painted fresh versions that year for the ones who lost out.
Q 09What covers the faces of the kissing couple in Magritte's The Lovers?
White cloth
White cloth: it is often traced to a tale that young Magritte saw his dead mother's face covered by her dress, but scholars now call that a myth.
Q 10How did Magritte's mother, Régina, die in 1912?
Drowning
Drowning: Régina Magritte drowned herself in the River Sambre, and the old tale that her young son watched the body recovered is now doubted by scholars.
Q 11Which Italian painter's The Song of Love moved Magritte to tears when he saw a reproduction of it?
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico: his canvas sets a classical bust beside a rubber glove, and Magritte said that on seeing it 'my eyes saw thought for the first time'.
Q 12Which 1926 work did Magritte regard as his first Surrealist picture?
The Lost Jockey
The Lost Jockey: it hung in his first solo show the next year, which reviewers panned so badly that he soon moved abroad.
Q 13Where did the young Magritte work as a draughtsman before designing adverts?
A wallpaper factory
Q 21Which wealthy British poet commissioned paintings from Magritte for his London home?
Edward James
Edward James: the eccentric heir was bankrolling Salvador Dalí in the same years, and filled his houses with Surrealist art made to order.
Q 22What bursts out of a fireplace in Magritte's Time Transfixed?
A steam locomotive
A steam locomotive: the fireplace vent stands in for a railway tunnel, and smoke, at home in chimneys and engines alike, is what ties the two together.
Q 23Which US city's Art Institute bought Magritte's Time Transfixed at auction in 1970?
Chicago
Chicago: the seller was auctioning his Surrealist collection to pay for Las Pozas, a concrete dreamscape he was building in the Mexican jungle.
A wallpaper factory: he drew designs there beside the painter Victor Servranckx, then made posters and adverts until a 1926 gallery contract let him paint full-time.
Q 14Which childhood friend from Charleroi did Magritte marry in 1922?
Georgette Berger
Georgette Berger: they had lost touch for years when they ran into each other again by chance in 1920, and she went on to model for many of his paintings.
Q 15After his first solo show flopped in 1927, where did Magritte move to join the Surrealists?
Paris
Paris: he befriended André Breton and the Surrealists there, then fell out with Breton and went home after three years.
Q 16In Magritte's Not to Be Reproduced, what does the man looking into a mirror see?
The back of his head
The back of his head: a patron had commissioned the picture as his own portrait, yet Magritte managed to paint it without ever showing the sitter's face.
Q 17In Magritte's Personal Values, what is odd about the comb, glass and shaving brush in the bedroom?
They are giant-sized
They are giant-sized: his New York dealer complained that the picture made him feel ill, and Magritte replied that this was proof it worked.
Q 18Which political movement did Magritte join in 1932, leaving and rejoining over the years?
Communism
Communism: he joined the Party more than once yet argued with it too, insisting that workers deserved luxury for the mind as well as bread.
Q 19In Magritte's Hegel's Holiday, what balances on top of an open umbrella?
A glass of water
A glass of water: Magritte pictured the philosopher amused, as if on holiday, by an object that both repels water and holds it.
Q 20Magritte's garish 1948 'vache' ('cow') paintings are widely read as a parody of which earlier art movement?
Fauvism
Fauvism: the Fauves were art's 'wild beasts', so Magritte offered a domesticated cow, dashing the pictures off in weeks to outrage the French art world.
Q 24Which American writer's novel lies on the mantelpiece in Magritte's Not to Be Reproduced?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe: the book is a French edition of his sea novel about Arthur Gordon Pym, a nod to a writer the Surrealists revered.
Q 25Besides fake Picassos, what did a close friend later claim Magritte and his brother had forged?
Banknotes
Banknotes: the story comes from a younger friend who said he sold the fakes himself, and scholars still dispute how much of it is true.
Q 26Which 1946 manifesto did Magritte sign, renouncing violence and pessimism?
Surrealism in Full Sunlight
Surrealism in Full Sunlight: it argued that after the war the movement should offer charm and joy, not dread, and its leader André Breton denounced Magritte for it.
Q 27Whose portrait of Madame Récamier did Magritte repaint with a coffin sitting in her place?
David
David: Magritte copied the Neoclassical couch and colours faithfully, then sat a coffin where the celebrated beauty reclined, and gave Manet's The Balcony the same treatment.
Q 28Which object recurs in Magritte's The Human Condition paintings to question what a picture is?
An easel
An easel: we assume its canvas copies the 'real' view behind it, then notice that both are only paint, which is the trap Magritte set.
Q 29Which Beatle did art dealer Robert Fraser surprise with Magritte's painting Le Jeu de Mourre in the 1960s?
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney: the dealer propped the picture on a table and slipped away unseen, which Paul called the coolest thing anyone had done with him; it went on to inspire the band's company logo.
Q 30Which singer-songwriter's 1983 song imagines the Magrittes and their dog as secret doo-wop fans after the war?
Paul Simon
Paul Simon: in it the respectable painter and his wife secretly thrill to doo-wop groups like the Penguins, the music Simon himself had fallen for as a boy.