Friends

Maurice Rapin
1924-2000
painter
Mirabelle Dors
1913 - 1991
painter and sculptor

Maurice Rapin first comes across Magritte’s work at the Salon d’Automne de la Libération in Paris in 1946. As for Mirabelle Dors, she meets Magritte (along with Clovis Trouille and Rapin) at the A l’Etoile scellée gallery in Paris in 1953, where she had been invited to exhibit. She marries Maurice Rapin in 1954. Rapin and Dors were during this time close to Breton’s vision of things, but they soon turn dissident and become confidants of Magritte. In 1957 the pair launch La Tendance populaire surréaliste, a project aiming 'to pursue surrealist investigations into new and specific domains'. In November, they publish a series of tracts on Magritte, drawing on extracts of their correspondance with him. Each page is illustrated by one of the painter’s works. Magritte’s correspondance addressed to Rapin and Dors between 1955 and 1958 was published by the couple in 1976, and donated to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in 1997.