Travail préparatoire pour une gouache inachevée c. 1967

This gouache sketch was made by René Magritte as a preparatory study for a larger work. I love how the washes of colour bleed into each other: shades of peach at the center, surrounded by hazy blues and violets. You can almost feel Magritte searching for the right tone, the perfect balance. The paint is applied in horizontal bands. It's almost like he’s creating a landscape, or maybe just a mood, that he can then use as a starting point for something more concrete. I can imagine him in his studio, lost in thought, brushing on these colours and letting them mix, letting them suggest possibilities. I feel this tension between something representational and something abstract, which would become a trademark of his work, playing with the edges of perception. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, what it means to see, to really see, the world around us.