The Project

LITO Masters, in partnership with the Musee Magritte Museum, is proud to offer two highly rendered prints after original paintings from the museum’s permanent collection. The sale of these works benefits the Musée Magritte Museum, whose mission centers on the preservation and advancement of René Magritte’s aesthetic and cultural legacy. The Musée Magritte Museum houses the largest collection of the artist’s works worldwide, representing his prolific production across mediums. It also provides researchers with access to an extensive archive of materials relating to the artist’s practice and life. Today the museum continues to honor the legacy of Magritte and the surrealist movement by mounting exhibitions that celebrate visual dialogues between the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

For the Drop, the museum selected L’empire des lumieres (1954) and Le retour (1940), which feature the artist’s most recognizable iconography and highlight his brilliant ability to turn seemingly ubiquitous scenes into impossible scenarios that defy reality. Under his masterful brush, a bird in flight seems carved from the sky itself and a serene street is caught simultaneously between day and night. Magritte’s  L’empire des lumieres series, executed over 20 years from the 1940s-1960s, is amongst the artist’s most sought after works, with a painting from the group setting the auction record for the artist in 2024.  

L’empire des lumieres, 1954-2025 
43 7/8 x 34 3/8 in. (111.4 x 87.3 cm)

Le retour, 1940-2025 
19 1/8 x 24 1/8 in. (48.5 x 61.3 cm) 

Each an edition of 50 
Medium: LITO HI-RND© print on paper within an aluminum frame  
Price: $2,000 (Le retour); $2,500 (L’empire des lumieres) 

© 2025 Artists RightsSociety (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC

"The painter's art, as I see it, is about making poetic images visible."

— René Magritte

The Artist

René Magritte (b. 1898– 1967, Belgium) was a major figure in Belgian Surrealism, Magritte was rapidly surrounded by Belgian, French and American artists, who influenced him and his work throughout his life. He developed his work according to various artistic techniques: “Surrealism in the sun”, as he himself defined it, or the “vâche period” at the end of the 1940s. The fifties and sixties were marked by work and research by the artist on repetition and by the great Magrittian images that assured his success.

Marcel Broodthaers, René Magritte, 1967. Image: © 2025 Estate of Marcel Broodthaers / ArtistsRights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels, Artwork: © 2025 C. Herscovici/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

LITO Masters

Founded in 2022, LITO is a forward-thinking printmaking company on a mission to widen access to art through new, pioneering technologies. Based in Bregenz, Austria, LITO and the LITO Technology Lab have developed state-of-the-art and patented technology to create prints with extreme precision and of unparalleled quality.

Using its Hi-Rnd© proprietary technology, LITO collaborates with leading contemporary artists and prints textures, colours and certain effects on paintings, such as reliefs and brushstrokes at multiple scales, to create and recreate original artworks. LITO Masters aims to support leading museums and institutions around the world by providing a new tool for research and the conservation of masterpieces, whilst allowing art lovers to live with their dream masterpiece.

© LITO Masters

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