René Magritte, in full René-François-Ghislain Magritte, (born November 21, 1898, Lessines, Belgium—died August 15, 1967, Brussels), Belgian artist, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters, whose bizarre flights of fancy blended horror, peril, comedy, and mystery. His works were characterized by particular symbols—the female torso, the bourgeois “little man,” the bowler hat, the castle, the rock, the window, and others.