Remedios Varo: Difference between revisions

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Remedios Varo Uranga (16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican para-

Born in

Varo’s father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo, was an intellectual man who had a strong influence on his daughter’s artistic development. Varo would copy the blueprints he brought home from his job in construction, and he helped her further develop her technical drawing abilities. He encouraged independent thought and supplemented her education with science and adventure books, notably the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. As she grew older, he provided her with text on mysticism and philosophy. Varo’s mother, Ignacia Uranga Bergareche, was born to Basque parents in Argentina. She was a devout Catholic and commended herself to the patron saint of Anglès, the Virgin of Los Remedios, promising to name her first daughter after the saint.^[2][3]

Her father was a hydraulic engineer, and the family traveled the Iberian Peninsula and into North Africa.^[4] To keep Remedios busy during these long trips, her father had her copy the technical drawings of his work with their straight lines, radii, and perspectives, which she reproduced faithfully. As a child, she read much with favorite authors including Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alexandre Dumas. She also read books about oriental philosophy and mysticism.^[3] Those first few years of her life left an impression on her that would later show up in motifs like machinery, furnishing, artifacts, and Romanesque and Gothic architecture unique to Anglès.

Varo was given the basic education deemed proper for young ladies of a good upbringing at a convent school - an experience that fostered her rebellious tendencies. Varo took a critical view of religion and rejected the religious ideology of her childhood education and instead clung to the liberal and universalist ideas that her father instilled in her.^[2]

Formative years

The very first works of Varo's, a self-portrait and several portraits of family members, date to 1923 when she was studying for a baccalaureate at the School of Arts and Crafts.

In 1924, aged 15, she enrolled at the

In 1930 she married a young painter named Gerardo Lizárraga. The couple left Spain for Paris, both to escape the rising political tensions as well as to be nearer to where much of Europe’s art scene was.[2]^[3]

Early career

As a young woman Varo had no doubts that she was meant to be an artist. After spending a year in Paris, Varo moved to Barcelona and formed her first artistic circle of friends, which included

When the Spanish Civil War began, the French Surrealist poet, Benjamin Peret, came to Barcelona to support the anti-Franco cause and met Varo. It was the beginning of an intensely romantic relationship that was recorded in the many letters declaring his love and publications dedicated to Varo. In 1937, Peret moved back to France, and Varo followed.^[6] It was in Paris where Varo was greatly influenced by the Surrealist Movement.^[7]

Only after her death was it discovered that Varo had never divorced her first husband Lizarraga.^[5] Due to her Republican ties, her 1937 move to Paris with Péret ensured that she would never be able to return to Franco's Spain.

Before her move to Mexico in 1941, Varo was arrested in Paris due to Nazi occupation of France.^[8]

Career

Europe

Varo shared a studio in Paris with Benjamin Peret and Esteban Frances. It was through Peret that she met André Breton and the Surrealist circle, which included Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Roberto Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, and Max Ernst among others. Shortly after arriving in France, Varo took part in the International Surrealist exhibitions in Paris and in Amsterdam in 1938. She drew vignettes for the Dictionnaire abregé du surrealisme and the magazines Trajectoire du Rêve, Visage du Monde and Minotaure featured her work. In late 1938, she participated in a collaborative series, Jeu de dessin communiqué (The Game of Communicated Drawing), of works with Breton and Peret. The series was much like a game. It began with an initial drawing, which was shown to someone for 3 seconds, and then that person tried to recreate what they had been shown. The cycle continued with their drawing and so on. Apparently, this led to very interesting psychological implications that Varo later used in her paintings many times.

Despite the social circles, she and Peret lived in poverty, with Varo having to copy and even forge paintings in order to get by.

Compared to her time in Mexico, she produced very little work while working in Paris. This may have been due to her status as a

In 1941, she fled Europe for

In Mexico, she met regularly with other European artists such as Gunther Gerzso, Kati Horna, José Horna, and Wolfgang Paalen. In Mexico, she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. However, because Mexican muralism still dominated the country’s art scene, surrealism was not generally well received. She worked as an assistant to Marc Chagall with the design of the costumes for the production of the ballet Aleko, which premiered in Mexico City in 1942.^[2]

She worked at other jobs including in publicity and decorating. In 1947, Péret returned to Paris, and Varo traveled to Venezuela, living there for two years.^[2] She returned to Mexico and began her third and last important relationship with Austrian refugee Walter Gruen, who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and he gave her the economic and emotional support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.^[3] In 1955, Varo had her first individual exhibition at the Galería Diana in Mexico City, which was well received. One reason for this was that Mexico had opened up to other artistic trends. Buyers were put on waiting lists for her work. Even Diego Rivera was supportive. Her second showing was as the Salón de la Arte de Mujer in 1958. In 1960, her representative, Juan Martín, opened his own gallery and showed her work there, and opened a second in 1962, at the height of her career. Only a year after that opening, she died.^[2][3] Her work is well known in Mexico, but not as commonly known throughout the rest of the world.^[10]

She has said about working in Mexico, “for me it was impossible to paint among such anxiety. In this country I have found the tranquility that I have always searched for.”^[9]

Major influences

Artistic influences

Renaissance art inspired harmony, tonal nuances, unity, and narrative structure in Varo’s paintings. The allegorical nature of much of Varo's work especially recalls the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, and some critics, such as Dean Swinford, have described her art as "postmodern allegory," much in the tradition of Irrealism.

Varo was greatly influenced by her first and second husbands, Gerardo Lizarraga and Benjamin Peret.^[11] Her first husband was a well-respected painter and her second husband was a surrealist poet.^[12]

Varo was also influenced by styles as diverse as those of

While there is little overt influence of Mexican art on her work, Varo and the other surrealists were captivated by the seemingly porous borders between the marvelous and the real in Mexico.[9]

Varo's painting The Lovers served as inspiration for some of the images used by

She considered surrealism as an "expressive resting place within the limits of Cubism, and as a way of communicating the incommunicable".^[3]

Even though Varo was critical of her childhood religion, Catholicism, her work was influenced by religion. She differed from other Surrealists because of her constant use of religion in her work.^[4] She also turned to a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western for influence. She was influenced by her belief in magic and animistic faiths. She was very connected to nature and believed that there was strong relation between the plant, human, animal, and mechanical world. Her belief in mystical forces greatly influenced her paintings.^[5] Varo was aware of the importance of biology, chemistry, physics and botany, but thought it should blend together with other aspects of life.^[5]

She turned with equal interest to the ideas of Carl Jung as to the theories of George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart and the Sufis, and was as fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail as with sacred geometry, alchemy and the I Ching. In 1938 and 1939 Varo joined her closest companions Frances, Roberto Matta and Gordon Onslow Ford in exploring the fourth dimension, basing much of their studies off of Ouspensky's book Tertium Oganum. The books Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy by Grillot de Givry and The History of Magic and the Occult by Kurt Seligmann were highly valued in Breton's Surrealist circle. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

She was also greatly influenced by her childhood journeys. She often depicted out of the ordinary vehicles in mystifying lands. These works echo her family travels in her childhood.^[4]

Also, the

All refugees that were forced to flee from Europe to Mexico City after World War two, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Kati Horna formed a bond that would immensely affect their lives and work. They all lived in proximity to each other in Colonia Roma.

Varo and Carrington had previously met while living in Paris through Andre Breton. Although Horna did not meet the other two until they were all in Mexico City, she was already familiar with the work of Varo and Carrington after being given a few of their paintings by Edward James, a British poet and patron of the surrealist movement.

All three would attend the meetings of followers of the Russian mystics Peter Ouspensky and George Gurdjieff.^[14] They were inspired by Gurdjieff’s study of the evolution of consciousness and Ouspensky’s idea of the possibility of four dimensional painting. Though deeply influenced by the idea of the Russian mystics, the women often ridiculed the practices and behavior of those in the circle.

After becoming friends, Varo and Carrington began writing collaboratively and wrote two unpublished plays together. They wrote in a way similar to game, Cadavre Exquis, where they would take turns writing small segments of text and put them together. Even when not writing together, they were often working collaboratively, often drawing from the same sources of inspiration and using the same themes in their paintings. Despite the fact that their work is extremely similar, there is one major difference. Varo’s painting is about line and form, while Carrington's work is about tone and color. Varo and Carrington would stay extremely close friends for 20 years, until Varo’s death in 1963.^[15]

Interpretations of Varo's artwork

The male surrealists almost never saw their female counterparts as capable artists; therefore, the

Later in her career, Varo’s characters developed into her emblematic androgynous figures with heart-shaped faces, large almond eyes, and the aquiline noses that represent her own features. Varo often depicted herself through these key features in her paintings, regardless of the figure's gender.^[5] The sense of isolation was achieved again and again as Varo secluded her characters in one environment or another, conveying an extraordinarily powerful message to those who paid attention long enough to notice it. Her use of seemingly autobiographical characters—confined and held captive by forces unknown—could be seen as exposing the dynamic of superiority that is inherent in male surrealist’s misuse of women as muses. It could be interpreted that her paintings are responses to the marginalization of women; portrayals of the characteristic misogynist treatment of women artists by the male surrealists by likening her characters and chimerical figures to prisoners.

Varo’s legacy

In 1963 Varo died of a heart attack. Breton commented that the death made her "the sorceress who left too soon."^[2] Her mature paintings, fraught with arguably feminist meaning, are predominantly from the last few years of her life. Varo’s partner for the last 15 years of her life, Walter Gruen, dedicated his life to cataloguing her work and ensuring her legacy. The paintings of androgynous characters that share Varo’s facial features, mythical creatures, the misty swirls and eerie distortions of perspective are characteristic of Varo’s unique strain of surrealism. Varo has painted images of isolated, androgynous, auto-biographical figures to highlight the captivity of the true woman. While her paintings have been interpreted as more surrealist canvases that are the product of her passion for mysticism and alchemy, or as auto-biographical narratives, her work carries implications far more significant.^[10]

In 1971 the posthumous retrospective exhibition organised by the

More than fifty of her works were displayed in a retrospective exhibition in 2000 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.^[16]

Currently the ownership of 39 of her paintings, first loaned and then given by Gruen to Mexico City's

The book The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon features a scene in which the main character recalls crying in front of a painting by Varo titled, Bordando el Manto Terrestre.^[17]

Selected list of works

• 1935 El tejido de los sueños (Fabric of Dreams)
• 1942 Gruta mágica (Magical Grotto)
• 1947 Paludismo (wrongly known as Libélula) (Malaria (anopheles mosquito, Anopheles gambiae))
• 1947 El hombre de la guadaña (muerte en el mercado) (The Man with the scythe (death in the market)
• 1947 La batalla (The Battle)
• 1947 Wahgwah
• 1947 Amibiasis o los vegetales (Amebiasis or Plant)
• 1955 Useless Science or the Alchemist
• 1955 Ermitaño meditando (Meditating Hermit)
• 1955 La revelación o el relojero^[18]
• 1955 Trasmundo (Transworld)
• 1955 The Lovers
• 1955 El flautista (The Piper)
• 1955 Solar Music'^[10]
• 1956 El paraíso de los gatos (Paradise of cats)
• 1956 To the Happiness of Women
• 1956 Les feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves)
• 1956 Harmony'^[10]
• 1957 Creation of the Birds
• 1957 Women’s Tailor
• 1957 Caminos tortuosos (Winding Roads)
• 1957 Reflejo lunar (Moon Reflection)
• 1957 El gato helecho (Fern Cat)
• 1958 Celestial Pabulum^[10]
• 1959 Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River'^[10][19]
• 1959 Catedral vegetal
• 1959 Encounter
• 1959 Unexpected Presence"^[10]
• 1960 Hacia la torre (Towards the Tower)
• 1960 Mimesis^[10][20]
• 1960 Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst's Office'^[10]
• 1960 Visit to the Plastic Surgeon’s
• 1961 Vampiro (Vampire)
• 1961 Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle
• 1962 Vampiros vegetarianos - sold for $3,301,000 in May 2015^[21][22]
• 1962 Fenómeno (Phenomenon)
• 1962 Spiral Transit
• 1963 Naturaleza muerta resucitando (Still Life Resurrecting)
• 1963 Still Life Reviving'^[10]

See also

• Leonora Carrington
• Salvador Dalí
• Max Ernst
• Wolfgang Paalen
• Women Surrealists
• Maruja Mallo

References