Remedios Varo | |
|---|---|
 Varo at her easel, 1958 | |
| Born | María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga (1908-12-16)16 December 1908 Anglès, Girona, Spain |
| Died | 8 October 1963(1963-10-08) (aged 54) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Alma mater | Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando |
| Movement | Surrealism |
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga (known asRemei orRemedios Varo, 16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963) was aCatalan[1]surrealist painter[2] who lived in several European cities before being exiled in Mexico.
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was born on 16 December 1908 inAnglès, a small town in theprovince of Girona, inCatalonia. Remedios was named in honor of theVirgen de los Remedios ("Virgin of Remedies") as a 'remedy' for an older sister's death. She had two surviving siblings: an older brother Rodrigo, and a younger brother Luis. Her mother, Ignacia Uranga y Bergareche, was bornin Argentina to Basque parents and her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo, was fromCórdoba inAndalusia.[3]
When Varo was a young child, her family moved frequently throughout Spain and North Africa to follow her father's work as ahydraulic engineer.[4] While her father was a somewhatagnostic liberal who studiedEsperanto,[a] her mother was a devout Catholic and enrolled her in a strictconvent school at the age of eight. Varo's father encouraged her artistic endeavors, taking her to museums and having her meticulously copy his diagrams. While in school, Varo was somewhat rebellious. She read authors such asAlexandre Dumas,Jules Verne, andEdgar Allan Poe, as well asmystical literature andEastern spiritual works.[6] As a teenager she became interested in dreams, writing stories which developed fantastical themes she would later explore in her art.[7]
In 1924, Varo enrolled at the prestigiousReal Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando inMadrid, a school known for rigid and exacting training. Aside from the required classes,[b] she took an elective class inscientific drawing. One of her instructors wasRealist painterManuel Benedito, from whom she learned traditionaloil painting techniques.[9] Much of the work she created from 1926–1935, particularly her academic paintings, has been lost; it is unknown what happened to those artworks.[10]
In the 1920s, theSurrealist movement was becoming popular with the Madrid art scene; the city hostedavant-garde intellectuals and artists such asFederico García Lorca,Luis Buñuel,Rafael Alberti, andSalvador Dalí. Varo became attracted to the surreal, finding inspiration in the works ofHieronymus Bosch,Francisco Goya, andEl Greco which she visited at theMuseo del Prado.[11][12]
Varo graduated from the Academia in 1930.[13] Soon after, she married former classmateGerardo Lizárraga [es] inSan Sebastián. Lizárraga was a fellow Surrealist who worked in both visual arts andfilmmaking; he was also ananarchist.[14] Following an outbreak of violence in Madrid resulting from the establishment of theSecond Spanish Republic, Varo and Lizárraga moved toParis.[15] In Paris, Varo enrolled at theAcadémie de la Grande Chaumière and quickly dropped out, realizing she did not want to remain within the confines of formal education. Working odd jobs and engaging with the Parisian art scene, the couple stayed in the city for a year before moving toBarcelona in 1932.[16][13]
By the early 1930s, Barcelona had become the liberal and avant-garde artistic center of Spain, more so than Madrid. Soon after arriving, Varo started a romantic relationship with fellow artistEsteban Francés, although still living with Lizárraga; this was the first of multipleopen relationships she would have.[17] While in Barcelona, Varo and Lizárraga worked for an advertising firm. Varo became part of a circle of other avant-garde artists, includingJosé Luis Florit [Wikidata] andÓscar Domínguez,[13] and with Francés she came into contact with French Surrealists.[17] While sharing an art studio on thePlaça de Lesseps with Francés, Varo began creating her first artworks after graduating from the Academia. Her work of the mid-1930s indicates familiarity with contemporary Spanish and French Surrealist imagery.[18] Varo often played the popular Surrealist gamecadavre exquis with her friends, and sent works she had made via the game to fellow artist and friendMarcel Jean for circulation in Paris.[19]
By the summer of 1935, the tension and violence which had caused Varo and Lizárraga to leave Madrid had spread throughout Spain; theSpanish Civil War began the next year. Varo's brother Luis enlisted inthe Francoist army and died oftyphoid fever soon thereafter, a course of events which would come as a shock to Varo.[20] It was in this context that Domínguez introduced Varo to French Surrealist poetBenjamin Péret, who had arrived in Barcelona in August 1936 to volunteer with the Republican faction. Péret was highly politically active; he was a member of the TrotskyistPOUM and staunchlyanti-clerical.[21] Varo and Péret soon became romantically involved; his 1936 volume of love poetry,Je sublime, was dedicated to her.[22]
When Péret decided to return to Paris in 1937, Varo joined him.[22] Francés soon followed, and would compete with Péret for Varo's affection. Through Péret, Varo became acquainted with the inner circle of Surrealists, includingAndré Breton,Max Ernst,Victor Brauner,Joan Miró,Wolfgang Paalen, andLeonora Carrington.[23][24] Varo felt intimidated by Breton—and Péret—at Surrealist gatherings, as the two fostered an atmosphere whichAndré Thirion compared to an "entrance exam".[25] By the late 1930s, Varo had started giving her year of birth as 1913 instead of 1908; this would later be reflected on her passport and grave. According to biographer Janet Kaplan, she may have fabricated being five years younger to fit more closely to the Surrealist ideal of thefemme-enfant: an uncorrupted, childlike woman intuitively connected with theunconscious mind. During the period of 1937–1939, Varo experimented with new techniques and influences, finding inspiration in the works of her friends Dalí, Ernst, Paalen, Brauner, andRené Magritte.[26] Never formally a part of the Surrealist group, Varo nonetheless participated in the 1936London International Surrealist Exhibition and subsequent International Surrealist Exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and New York. Her work was also often republished in Surrealist periodicals, includingMinotaure.[27]
While in Paris with Péret, Varo lived the impoverished andbohemian life typical of artists. They both worked numerous odd jobs; Varo, along with Domínguez, resorted to forgingde Chirico paintings when particularly destitute.[28] As she was living with Péret, she became romantically involved with Brauner[c] and her work of the period was heavily influenced by his.[30]
In 1939, the Nationalists claimed victory in Spain andFrancisco Franco disallowed anyone associated with the Republicans from entering the country. Varo became permanently unable to return to her home and was isolated from her family. This deeply affected her and was a source of pain and regret throughout her life.[22] In July of the same year, the French government beganevacuating Paris, and in SeptemberWorld War II officially began. Varo and her circle stayed in the city, which for the first eight months of war saw little action other than an influx of foreign refugees from elsewhere in Europe. As a foreign national herself, Varo now risked deportation in an increasingly hostile environment. Her association with the communist Péret put her at further risk, and he was imprisoned in early 1940 for his political activism.[31] Varo was imprisoned as well, at some point in 1940, for her relationship with Péret. She never spoke about this experience; the length and location of her internment and the conditions she faced are unknown. However, according to friends' accounts, it had an intense effect on her.[32]
While viewing a documentary film onFrench internment camps by Hungarian photojournalistEmerico Weisz, by coincidence Varo recognized Gerardo Lizárraga, to whom she was still legally married. They had lost contact when Varo left Spain, while Lizárraga remained to fight for the Republicans; when the Nationalists won, he fled to France and was imprisoned. After seeing the film, Varo and her network successfully bribed authorities and secured the release of Lizárraga.[33]
On 14 June 1940,the Nazis invaded Paris, putting Varo at imminent risk. She, along with millions of other Parisians, fled to theunoccupied south of France. Domínguez insisted she take his seat in a car going south, and eventually she arrived in the coastal village ofCanet-Plage. Initially staying withJacques Hérold and several other refugees, she soon moved in with Brauner.[34] By August 1940, she had left Canet-Plage forMarseille and reunited with now-free Péret. Marseille was, although unoccupied, not safe; theGestapo maintained a presence in the city. Varo and Péret found shelter withVarian Fry's Emergency Rescue Committee, an organization dedicated to facilitating the migration of artists and intellectuals from wartime Europe to the Americas.[35][36] Over time, much of Varo's circle made it to Marseille, where they shared their limited funds among each other and met nightly in cafés.[37]
The situation in Marseille deteriorated in 1940 and 1941, and the Rescue Committee recognized Péret and Varo's immediate need to escape theVichy authorities. With Péret having been denied entry into the United States due to his communist politics, they looked toward Mexico, which had declared amnesty for Spanish refugees in 1940. The Rescue Committee made appeals for funding of their travel to Mexico, and found places for them on the linerSerpa Pinto, due to depart fromCasablanca. Through unknown means,[d] Varo and Péret arrived in Casablanca and boarded the ship, which was crowded with other refugees.[39]
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Varo arrived in Mexico City in late 1941, part of a large migration of Spanish intellectuals and artists. The Mexican government underLázaro Cárdenas gave Spanish refugees asylum and automatic citizenship, with few restrictions on employment; the European émigrés therefore contributed significantly to Mexico's economy and culture. Varo and Péret, rather than becoming ingratiated with the Mexican artistic community, preferred to associate with other Europeans, including old friends Lizárraga and Francés. Also within their circle wereGunther Gerzso, Kati Horna, Emerico Weisz,Dorothy Hood,Luis Buñuel,César Moro, Wolfgang Paalen, andAlice Rahon. Leonora Carrington, whom Varo had previously met in Paris, would become Varo's closest friend.[40]
Varo and Péret rented atenement apartment together in theColonia San Rafael neighborhood, which Varo decorated with artwork and objects she thought of as magical. She also took care of several birds and stray cats.[41][42] They were impoverished, and Varo supported herself and Péret by working odd jobs, including forMarc Chagall.[43] She made her most consistent living from producing illustrations forBayer advertisements.[44] During the early 1940s, Varo focused on writing as a creative outlet, producing few paintings.[45]
In 1947 Péret wanted to return to France, while Varo wished to stay in Mexico, which by then she viewed as her home. Péret moved back to Paris, and Varo started a relationship with a French pilot and fellow refugee named Jean Nicolle. They initially moved in together with Horna in theColonia Roma neighborhood; they later moved into Lizárraga's previous apartment.[46]
Soon after, she joined a French scientific expedition in Venezuela with Nicolle. There she visited her mother and brother Rodrigo, anepidemiologist. Varo, staying inCaracas andMaracay, studiedmosquitoes with a microscope and produced drawings of them for a Public Ministry of Health campaign againstmalaria. She returned to Mexico City in 1949, after struggling to obtain funds for travel back.[47][48]
In 1952 Varo married Austrian refugee Walter Gruen, and ended her career in commercial graphic design in favor of her personal art.[48] Varo found critical and financial success with two exhibitions at theGalería Diana, including her first solo exhibition, in 1955–1956.[49] The success of the 1955 solo exhibition allowed Varo to establish a waiting list for buyers.[50] Her second and final solo exhibition took place at theGalería Juan Martín in 1962; all of the paintings displayed were sold.[51]
Varo painted her final finished canvas, titledStill Life Reviving, in 1963. She died of a heart attack on 8 October of the same year.[51]
Initially having met in Paris in the 1930s when the latter was living withMax Ernst, Varo and Carrington reunited in Mexico City. Carrington was an English artist who bonded with Varo over their shared experiences.[45][e] Carrington and Varo shared an interest in the occult and magic, and they found inspiration in the folk practices of Mexico.[52]
Among all the refugees that were forced to flee from Europe to Mexico City during and after World War II, Remedios Varo,Leonora Carrington, andKati Horna formed a bond that would immensely affect their lives and work. They lived close to each other in theColonia Roma district of Mexico City.
Varo and Carrington had previously met throughAndré Breton while living in Paris. 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 byEdward James, a British poet and patron of the surrealist movement.
All three attended the meetings of followers of the Russian mysticsPeter Ouspensky andGeorge Gurdjieff.[53] They were inspired by Gurdjieff's study of the evolution of consciousness and Ouspensky's idea of the possibility offour-dimensional painting. Though deeply influenced by the ideas of the Russian mystics, the women often ridiculed the practices and behavior of those in the circle.[citation needed] The trio were sometimes referred to as "the three witches", because of their interest in the occult and spiritual practices.[54]
After becoming friends, Varo and Carrington began writing collaboratively and wrote two plays together which were not published:El santo cuerpo grasoso and (unfinished)Lady Milagra. Using a technique similar tocadavre exquis, they took turns writing small segments of text and put them together. Even when not writing together, they were often drawing from the same sources of inspiration and using the same themes in their paintings.[55] Varo and Carrington remained close friends until Varo's death in 1963.[56]
The characters pictured in Varo's artwork resemble herself, with heart-shaped faces, long noses, and almond-shaped eyes.[57] According to art historian Janet Kaplan, much of her work is autobiographical in nature; her 1960–1961 triptych reflects her time as a student in a restrictive convent school.[7] Her paintings, often depicting journeys and encounters with strange people, also reflect the frequent travel of her childhood[58] and her traumatic experience of exile and war.[57]
With the discovery of the pre-Columbian villageTlatilco in the early 1940s, Varo began collectingpre-Columbian artifacts from the site and elsewhere; she developed a large collection over time.[59] However, indigenous Mexican influence on her art was limited, and she continued to mostly draw from European sources throughout her mature period.[60]
Varo considered surrealism as an "expressive resting place within the limits of Cubism, and as a way of communicating the incommunicable".[61]
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.[62] 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.[2] Varo was aware of the importance of biology, chemistry, physics, and botany, and thought it should blend together with other aspects of life.[2] Her fascination with science, includingEinstein's theory of relativity andDarwinian evolution, has been noted by admirers of her art.[63]
She turned with equal interest to the ideas ofCarl Jung as to the theories ofGeorge Gurdjieff,P. D. Ouspensky,Helena Blavatsky,Meister Eckhart, and theSufis, and was as fascinated with the legend of theHoly Grail as withsacred geometry,witchcraft,[64]alchemy, and theI Ching. Varo described her beliefs about her own powers of witchcraft in a letter to English author Gerald Gardner, "Personally, I don't believe I'm endowed with any special powers, but instead with an ability to see relationships of cause and effect quickly, and this beyond the ordinary limits of common logic."[65] In 1938 and 1939, Varo joined her closest companions Frances,Roberto Matta, andGordon Onslow Ford in exploring thefourth dimension, basing much of their studies on Ouspensky's bookTertium Organum. The booksIllustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy byGrillot de Givry andThe History of Magic and the Occult byKurt 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.
One critic states, "Remedios seems to never limit herself to one mode of expression. For her tools of the painter and the writer are unified in breaking down our visual and intellectual customs".[66] Even so, most classify her as a surrealist artist in that her work displays many trappings of the surrealist practice. Her work displays a liberating self-image and evokes a sense of otherworldliness which is so characteristic of the surrealist movement. One scholar notes that Varo's practice ofautomatic writing directly correlates to that of the Surrealists. The father of Surrealism, André Breton, excluded women as fundamental to the movement of Surrealism, but after Varo's death in 1963, he connected her "forever to the ranks of international surrealism".[67]
Varo extensively used graphite-on-paperpreparatory drawings to plan her paintings; she also created many drawings independent of painting. Prior to starting a painting, Varo would make multiple graphite sketches and a final drawing onmasonite orcanvas.[68] From the mid-1950s onward, Varo typically used the smooth side ofhardboard layered withgesso and then sanded to create an even surface for painting. She then scratched fine lines irregularly throughout the board to create a distinctive texture; she may have used thequartz crystals she kept on her easel to create the scratches. She then transferred the sketch onto her prepared painting surface.[69]
When painting, Varo often painted the entire background environment before adding the figures or other prominent elements she had planned. She usedglazing and various texturingtechniques popular among Surrealists such asstippling,hatching, blotting,decalcomania, andsoufflage to create atmospheric effects. Varo would finish a painting by rendering details with fine brushes andsgraffito (delicately scratching through the paint to the gesso layer).[70] Other techniques she used includegrattage,scumbling, spattering, sponging, drying pooled paint, and inlayingmother-of-pearl.[71] She often signed her paintings using sgraffito. Shevarnished her paintings with adamar resin varnish she probably made herself.[72]
Varo wrote numerous surrealist stories, letters, dream narratives, and other works, mainly in composition notebooks. Many of her writings involve similar motifs to her paintings. According to Margaret Carson, the notebooks likely date from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Carson also speculates that many of the works in these notebooks were copies of originals written elsewhere, which may have been much earlier. Most of her writings were untitled and undated. Her husband Walter Gruen preserved an archive of her written works, which mostly remained unpublished and private until after her death in 1963. In 1965, her 1959 faux-anthropological workOn Homo rodans (an accompanying text for her sculptureHomo rodans) was printed as afacsimile, and reprinted in 1970. Gruen donated her personal archive of papers, as well as other belongings, to theMuseo de Arte Moderno in 2018.[73]
Varo's writing attracted little attention in scholarship until 1997, when an edited collection of her work was published. Subsequently, her written work has mainly been analyzed in comparison with her paintings.[74] Like her paintings, her writing was influenced by psychoanalysis. She wrote multiple letters to fictional psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, incorporating both real biographical details and fantasy.[75]
Scholarship on Varo's body of work has mainly focused on her experience of exile and travel, her esoteric and philosophical influences, or her place as awoman in the Surrealist movement.[74] Mexican philosopherJuliana González, a friend of Varo's,[76] writes that an element of "Romantic optimism" in her art distinguishes Varo from the broader Surrealist movement.[77]
Later in her career, her 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.[2] "Varo tends to not play out personal strife on the canvas but rather portrays herself in various roles in surreal dreamscapes".[66] "It is Varo herself who is the alchemist or explorer. In creating these characters, she is defining her identity".[78]
Many of Varo's works depict animals, primarily cats and birds. Varo also frequently depicted hybrid creatures which combined cats, owls, or women. Cats play varied roles in Varo's art; sometimes they are observers, conveyors of symbolism, or "familiars".[79] A small minority of her paintings feature cats as the central subject;[f] generally, cats occupy a collaborative role in the scene.[g][80] In Varo's work, birds usually represent imagination and spiritual enlightenment; in some paintings such asCreation of the Birds (1958) andThe Encounter (1962), owl-human hybrids represent wisdom.[82]
Varo's work also focuses onpsychoanalysis and its role in society and female agency. In speaking onWoman leaving the Psychoanalyst (1961), one of Varo's biographers states, "Not only does Varo debunk the idea of a correct process of mental healing, but also she trivializes the very nature of that process by representing the impossible: a physical and literal dismissal of the father, Order, and inLacanian terms the official entrance into culture: verbal Language".[66]
The Surrealist movement, like the broader intellectual culture of the period, was dominated by men who often heldmisogynistic views and sidelined women.[83][84][85] Varo did not consider her own work feminist, although her paintings have been interpreted through a feminist lens.[86] According to the art historian Deborah Haynes, Varo subverted the typicallypatriarchal attitudes of the Surrealists with her ambiguously gendered paintings.[87]
In 1964, the National Museum of Modern Art in thePalacio de Bellas Artes held a tribute exhibition of Varo's work, with record attendance.[51] TheMuseo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City held a retrospective exhibition in 1971, which attracted the then-highest attendance in the museum's history,[50] and again in 1983 and 1994.[88] More than fifty of her works were displayed in a retrospective exhibition in 2000 at theNational Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.[89] In 2023, the Art Institute of Chicago held an exhibit of her work the first to be held of her work in the last 20 years in the U.S. with half of the works seen for the first time in the U.S.[90]
Varo's artwork is well known in Mexico, but is not as well known throughout the rest of the world.[91]
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