"The White Race", By René Magritte, 1937, Art Institute of Chicago: Modern Art

"In 1937 René Magritte completed a series of four paintings, titled "The White Race", in which he depicted composite faces assembled entirely from disjointed body parts, “put together in a very unusual order.”

A fervent critic of fascism, Magritte aimed these discomforting portrayals of human anatomy at the cult of bodily perfection then prominent in Nazi-sanctioned art and propaganda.

The last of the series, this version is the only painting to position the startling face atop a body, unsettling the well-known art historical type of the bathing female nude.

When it was exhibited in 1938, amid the widespread condemnation of “degenerate art” in Germany, the painting’s owner expressed support of Magritte, writing that “the distorted forms … challenge us and demand our attention through their disintegration.”

Gift of The Leonard and Ruth Horwich Family Foundation
Size: 81 × 60 cm (31 7/8 × 23 5/8 in.)
Medium: Oil on canvas