Magritte Masterwork La Magie Noire Heads to Auction After 90 Years in One Family’s Care

05 October 2025

René Magritte with his work The Barbarian (Le Barbare) Photograph: René Magritte/Latrobe Regional Gallery

A rare and iconic painting by surrealist legend René Magritte La Magie Noire is set to go on public sale later this month in Paris after spending more than nine decades in the same family. The piece was originally acquired by the family of Suzanne Spaak, a French Resistance heroine who used her resources to shelter Jewish children during the Nazi occupation. Sotheby’s, which will manage the sale, estimates that the painting could fetch between €5 million and €7 million, though many expect it to surpass that range.

Magritte painted La Magie Noire at a time when he was experiencing financial hardship and critical indifference. His fortunes shifted when Suzanne Spaak’s family became patrons, offering him support during a turbulent phase of his career. The Spaaks had long ties to Magritte: Claude Spaak, Suzanne’s husband, was a playwright who commissioned work from him, and the family aided Magritte financially when few collectors would buy surrealist art.

Thomas Bompard, vice president of Sotheby’s France, described the sale as historic. He noted that this is the first time he’s ever handled a major Magritte work that has remained in private hands for so long. Bompard called the painting “the Taylor Swift of surrealism,” saying it is often the one work many people think of when imagining the movement.

The subject of La Magie Noire is a nude female figure whose upper body gradually merges with the sky, while her lower form remains distinct. In Magritte’s version of the theme, the model was his wife, Georgette Berger, and a dove rests on her shoulder in some compositions. A portion of the background is a calm sea under a sky, and the interior architectural detail suggests a room or wall structure within which the figure stands. The motif of flesh turning into sky recurs in Magritte’s oeuvre, and this is considered one of the earliest and most definitive versions.

Because La Magie Noire has been off the market since its purchase in the 1930s, many art historians and collectors anticipate fierce competition for the work. Sotheby’s plans to display it publicly in its Paris galleries between October 17 and 23 before the formal auction on October 24.

Among the layers of fascination here is the painting’s provenance. Suzanne Spaak was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for her resistance work and later executed just days before Paris was liberated in 1944. Her family retained La Magie Noire throughout decades of upheaval, preserving it amid wars and political change. The house that held it, and the story behind its custodianship, adds moral and emotional resonance to the sale.

Magritte’s own career arc gives the sale further weight. In the early 1930s, amid the Great Depression, he struggled to sell his paintings and had few exhibitions. His move to Paris initially failed to revive his reputation, prompting a return to Belgium and a period of advertising work. Only after years of persistence did his influence on surrealism become recognized.

Now, as the work reemerges after a long private life, it is poised to reenter public imagination. The sale will not just be about rare art valuation but about memory, resistance, and the survival of cultural treasures across generations.