The Eternally Obvious

1948
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 911
This work is a variant of a prototype made nearly twenty years earlier, now in the Menil Collection, Houston. Both were created in the same manner: Magritte first painted a nude portrait of his wife, which he then cut into segments, framed, and (in some cases) reassembled onto glass. These works exist between painting and sculpture, and the artist referred to them as both "objets" (objects) and "toiles découpées" (cut-up paintings). By dividing the body into five self-contained sections, Magritte paid tribute to and challenged the traditional female nude. Typically Surrealist, The Eternally Obvious plays with perception, asking the viewer to reconstruct mentally a whole body from discrete parts.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Eternally Obvious
  • Artist: René Magritte (Belgian, Lessines 1898–1967 Brussels)
  • Date: 1948
  • Medium: Oil on canvas mounted on board
  • Dimensions: Overall: 78 in. × 24 in. × 1 3/8 in. (198.1 × 61 × 3.5 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002
  • Object Number: 2002.456.12a–e
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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