Magritte/Torczyner: Letters Between Friends

Harry Torczyner was Magritte's New York-based attorney, friend, and stateside promoter. Up until Magritte's unexpected death in 1967, Torczyner kept every letter that they exchanged (including replicas of his own responses) during their ten year correspondence. For this, readers should be exceptionally thankful: the letters turn out to be a brilliant and insightful collection. Photographs, handwritten excerpts, and Magritte's working sketches are also interspersed throughout the anthology. Accompanying each letter is a French translation -- the language in which they were originally written -- and exact dates of composition are meticulously recorded. The highlights, of course, are Magritte's letters themselves, with his candid descriptions of inspiration, roadblocks, the creative process, and revelations about his own art and that of his contemporaries. Not to be missed.