Skip to main content
Advanced Search
The Voice of Silence (La voix du silence)
The Voice of Silence (La voix du silence)
Image © Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved.

The Voice of Silence (La voix du silence)

Artist (Belgian, 1898–1967)
Date1928
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 54 x 73 cm (21 1/4 x 28 3/4 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund
Object number1999.416
Label TextThe Surrealists gravitated to the irrational and uncanny, partly in reaction to the horrors of WWI, and partly influenced by new aspects of modern life that many found to be both exciting and destabilizing: rapid urbanization, automation, and cinema, among others. In 1927, after critics in Magritte’s native Belgium panned his first solo exhibition of surrealist painting, he relocated to Paris, where he exhibited alongside artists such as Salvador Dalí, and developed a friendship with the influential writer and advocate for surrealism, André Breton. Here, an ordinary domestic interior is overwhelmed by a menacing shadow cast by an unknown source. Such an image challenges the viewer to leave the familiar and confront the unknown. The setting is Magritte’s own Parisian apartment.
On View
On view