Pol Bury (1922-2005) was a Belgian artist involved with the Cobra group. Among his most famous works is the fountain-sculpture L'Octagon, located in San Francisco. Bury's early artistic endeavors suggest the influence of René Magritte and Yves Tanguy, the paintings he produced in the late 1930s and first half of the 1940s were included in the 1945 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme held in Brussels. Reflecting on his initial attraction to Surrealism, Bury later noted: "It was the total stance of the Surrealist movement which fascinated me".
