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a black and white drawing of a person sitting on a bench
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227 - René MAGRITTE (1898–1967). Autograph letter with drawing, Br…
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Estimate €2,000 - €2,500
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René MAGRITTE (1898–1967). Autograph letter with drawing, Brussels, 12 August 1961, [to his friend André Bosmans]; 2 pages, in-8 Regarding André Bosmans’s article, ‘Montrer du doigt la connaissance’ (‘Pointing the Finger at Knowledge’), for issue no. 2 of the journal Rhétorique, devoted to Magritte’s painting *La Présence d’esprit*. Magritte revisits his previous remarks, particularly regarding the meaning of the word ‘to exist’: ‘To exist means, as the poet is concerned [...] “to realise a possibility, to be another tree, a man, a church sprinkler, etc.” ’, and he suggests a further change in terminology… ‘Note that when one says: “Nothingness is a wonder of the world” (even the most beautiful one), it holds only the status of a thing given by the world, belonging to the world, forming part of the world. If you say: ‘Nothingness is more marvellous than all the wonders of the world’, it is no longer ranked amongst the possibilities which, taken together, constitute the world. (The world comprises: things of every kind – visible, invisible, real, imaginary.) Nothingness, then, is not part of the world, since whatever is in the world has an existence – of whatever order it may be. Nothingness is the absence of existence, which does not mean that Nothingness is nothing. [...] Nothingness would, in fact, be the absence of both Nothing and an existence that is virtually non-existent. Heidegger speaks very eloquently of Nothing. Like him, I believe that Nothing does not depend on a form of language—namely, Negation—but that this form of language is possible precisely because Nothing exists. The difference between Nothingness and Mystery seems to me to lie in the fact that Nothingness withdraws the existence of the things that Mystery makes possible. Nothingness is also that which Mystery has not made possible. These two terms seem to me to be inseparable, for Nothingness is a mystery that Mystery necessarily makes possible (the other possibilities are not absolutely necessary since they may disappear)’... He sketches out a new ‘idea’ for a painting: ‘ A little girl in a blue dress, her head facing the sun. She is sitting on a low stone wall in front of a landscape’... René Magritte, Letters to André Bosmans 1958–1967 (Seghers-Isy Brachot, 1990), pp. 184–186. Provenance: Drouot-Richelieu auction (Laurence Calmels), 24 January 1996, Correspondence with André Bosmans, no. 66(2).
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part II
Auction location
Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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