It was a terrifying interruption to an otherwise peaceful day at the René Magritte Museum (located in the artist’s former home) on September 29, 2009. As three employees and two tourists enjoyed a quiet morning in the small former home of the artist, the doorbell of the by-appointment-only museum rang just after 10:00. Two men entered, held a gun at the museum attendant who had greeted them, forced everyone to the ground in the museum’s courtyard, and then left with one painting in their possession – the 1948 oil portrait Olympia. The painting, atypical of Magritte’s other surrealist object and landscape portraits, shows his wife, Olympia, lying nude on a beach with a conch shell on her stomach.

The painting is valued at over $1 million, but most experts guess that the thieves did not intend to sell the masterpiece. The painted portrait is far too famous to sell, even on the black market, and the men took only the one piece, despite having time and access to numerous other works. The details of the crime suggest that an illegal collector hired these two men to steal this specific original oil art for his or her own underground collection.

Paul Klee is hard to classify. His works are instantly recognizable and belong in a category of their own. They are abstract, expressionist, Bauhaus, cubist, surrealist but when trying to describe his work one ends up grasping for something more. His work does not fit into any box of art history but rather it seems to be a natural extension of himself.

When stumbling upon his works in museums, the word childlike is sure to appear on many lips. This quality is quite whimsical, romantic and even a bit humorous. It makes it hard to not instantly love Klee.

In his early years, Klee struggled with art-school. Color was the hurdle. He seemed to lack a natural sense of using color, but he continued with art. Klee was also a gifted musician but felt that he had something to add to abstract art not music. It was this element of avant garde in art that excited him, he did not sense this in music.

It was when Klee met famed artist, Kandinsky that he began to open up to the possibilities with color. This turning point reach it's clarity when he quipped “Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment. Color and I are one. I am a painter.”

Surrealism: The word itself evokes dream-like, absurd yet serenely beautifully painted images. Back in the early 20's when surrealism was of the most radical and obscene of art who would have realized that this style and form of art would become classic. And yet today a piece of surrealist art work is sure to be admired by all lovers of art, traditional or contemporary.

While Dada was the anti-art, rejecting all that the art world held near and dear, Surrealism had a different view on art. These artists believed that paintings depicting ordinary scenes from life were important to art, but that the canvas needed to make room for imagination. They believed a painting could hold all things the artist could dream up, and that was where true and exciting art was formed.

The philosophy of the movement fit the aesthetic of the art quite literally. They thought that human beings needed to be freed from what they saw as a false rationality and all of the expectations and beliefs of social norms and customs. They were also interested in Freudian psychology, especially the unconscious and dreams.