Which 1929 René Magritte painting shows a pipe above the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”?

René Magritte’s 1929 painting The Treachery of Images shows a carefully painted tobacco pipe above the French sentence “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” meaning “This is not a pipe.”

The statement points out that a painted image is not the physical object it represents. A viewer cannot fill the painted pipe with tobacco; the canvas contains only lines, colors and words. Magritte used this visual paradox to challenge assumptions about language, representation and reality.

The work is often called “This Is Not a Pipe,” although that is an English translation of its famous inscription rather than its official title. It belongs to Magritte’s exploration of ordinary objects placed in intellectually unsettling contexts.

Magritte painted several related works involving words and images. The Treachery of Images is held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and remains one of the most recognizable examples of philosophical Surrealist art.