How can I use this resource?

With this resource, you can discover the life and work of René Magritte, the Belgian painter who created strange and mysterious images that challenged the conventional ways of seeing and thinking. This is a fun way to practice your cutting and gluing skills and your creativity. The pictures are silhouette collages. By cutting out a silhouette we get two types of form: The positive form is the subject of the image, the negative is the background. By swapping around the subjects and backgrounds kids can create effective and surprising compositions really easily and design their own surrealist pictures. 

What does this resource contain?

This resource contains 16 templates for making surrealist pictures based on René Magritte's style. Each template has a silhouette or a background that you can print on white paper and color with crayons, markers, pencils, or paints. You can mix and match the silhouettes and the backgrounds to create different combinations. You can also use your own silhouettes or backgrounds to make more variations. Then you can carefully cut out the silhouettes and glue them onto the backgrounds. You can make one or more of each template and create a surreal display.

About René Magritte

René Magritte (1898 - 1967) belongs among the most significant proponents of Surrealism. Surrealism literally means ‘more than real’. Something is surreal if it appears imaginary or even dream-like. The surrealist painters tried to shake up conventional ways of thinking and habitual modes of seeing, and to mix reality with dreams. Magritte did this particularly well because he painted objects in a naturalistic style but then put them together in an unusual way that made them seem strange. Magritte was always mindful of introducing something unexpected into the mundane and familiar. His paintings are a kind of puzzle full of unexpected, disorienting, and sometimes frightening things that cause the viewer to ask questions.