A René Magritte painting, *La Magie Noire* (1934), will be auctioned at Sotheby’s Paris on October 24 with a high estimate of €7 million ($8.1 million). The work has remained in the same private collection for nearly a century, having been acquired directly from the artist by the family of World War II resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak, who was executed by the Gestapo in 1944 for helping Jewish children escape Nazi persecution. The painting depicts Magritte’s wife, Georgette Berger, and is the first of ten portraits in which the female body merges with sky, stone, and spirit.
The sale matters because it brings to market a seminal Surrealist work that has never before been available to collectors, with a provenance tied to a heroic wartime figure. The auction coincides with a surge in the Surrealist art market—Christie’s sold another Magritte for $121.2 million in 2024—and follows the centennial of Surrealism celebrated by major museums. The painting’s history of early patronage by the Spaak family, who supported Magritte during a period of no sales, adds significant cultural and historical weight to the offering.