The Menaced Assassin

The Menaced Assassin is one of Magritte's largest and most theatrical compositions. Magritte was an avid fan of the pre-World War I popular crime fiction series Fantômas; he borrowed the placement of the two detectives' figures flanking the door frame from the Le Mort Qui Tue (The Murderous Corpse), a film from the series first released in 1913. It was Magritte's ambition to create a similarly immersive and fantastical world on the canvas, here made manifest in the unsolvable narrative of this enduringly mysterious painting.

Credit: Kay Sage Tanguy Fund