Phaidon Press Ltd, Oxford, 1990. Old sticker mark at top right of front cover, otherwise good secondhand copy.

The paintings of the Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte (1898-1967) have exerted an extraordinary fascination, particularly since the enormous increase in awareness and popularity of his work during the 1960s. Magritte shows us a world of silence and isolation in which familiar objects are altered or juxtaposed in 'impossible' combinations in order to create a sense of disorientation and the absurd.

Richard Calvocoressi's highly successful introduction to Magritte was first published in 1979 and revised and enlarged by the addition of notes to the colour plates and many black-and-white illustrations.