News
Magritte jumps onto the grass
Belgium will face Spain in the World Cup quarterfinals, but their presence in the tournament isn't solely due to football. There's also a direct link to art and to one of the essential figures of Belgian culture: René Magritte. The Red Devils' resounding victory over the United States not only secured their passage to the next round but also brought the surrealist painter's visual universe back into the public eye before millions of viewers.
The Belgian national team has transformed its away kit into an aesthetic statement. Designed by Adidas, the jersey is an explicit homage to Magritte, taking as its starting point one of his most celebrated works, La voix des airs (1931). Rather than literally transferring the painting to the fabric, the design reinterprets some of its most recognizable elements to create a piece that straddles the line between sportswear, national identity, and artistic evocation.
The base of the shirt, a pale blue reminiscent of the open skies so prevalent in the painter's iconography, serves as a backdrop for a repeating pattern of balls in shades of pink and blue. The design originates from a transformation of the floating metal bells that appear in *La voix des airs* , here becoming a graphic motif that connects Magritte's surrealist imagery with the language of football. Added to this are fine horizontal lines woven into the fabric, evoking the markings on a playing field, reinforcing the dialogue between the painting and the sports uniform.
The most explicit reference, however, appears under the collar. There, the phrase Ceci n'est pas un maillot (“This is not a jersey”) is written in a style immediately reminiscent of Magritte, serving as a nod to one of his most iconic works, La trahison des images (The Treachery of Images ). In that painting, the artist depicted a pipe accompanied by the famous inscription “This is not a pipe,” questioning the relationship between image, representation, and reality. The Belgian jersey revives this conceptual game and brings it into the present with irony and a touch of complicity.
Far from being an isolated gesture, this proposal is part of a visual strategy that Belgium has been developing in its recent major international tournaments. In recent years, the national team has used its alternate kits as a showcase for different expressions of the country's cultural identity. At Euro 2016, it looked to Belgian cycling tradition; at the 2022 World Cup, it paid homage to the festive and colorful world of Tomorrowland; and at Euro 2024, it drew inspiration from Tintin and the graphic imagery of Hergé. The Magritte-themed jersey continues this approach and takes it a step further by featuring one of the key figures in 20th-century European art.
The most interesting aspect of the design is precisely that it avoids the easy reproduction of a famous work, opting instead for a more intelligent reinterpretation. Adidas doesn't simply place a painting on a t-shirt; rather, it borrows Magritte's visual vocabulary—his suspended forms, his palette, his conceptual humor, and his play with perception—to construct a garment that functions both as a uniform and a cultural object. The result is an unusual collaboration between fine art and sport, a fusion in which the t-shirt ceases to be a mere advertising medium and becomes a visual narrative about Belgian identity.
You may be
interested
...
