“Not a biography” indeed!
This graphic—OK, un-biography, is an imaginative attempt to get inside the head of surrealist painter René Magritte—or at least under the artist’s hat, since his trademark bowler is prominent throughout Thomas Campi’s colored panels.
Writer Vincent Zabus’ whimsical narrative explores Magritte’s artistic roots (Fantômas films and Edgar Allan Poe?), origin story (as a child he encountered a painter at his easel in a cemetery) and aesthetic (“What is hidden must be shown”).
Magritte’s paintings haunt the hapless protagonist investigating the artist’s life in Zabus’ story.
