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Remedios Varo Uranga (December 16, 1908 – October 8, 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga in Anglès, a small town in the province of Girona, Spain in 1908. In 1924 she studied at the Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her second husband (the first was Gerardo Lizarraga, a painter, whom it was discovered after her death, she never divorced), the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret in Barcelona. There she was a member of the art group Logicophobiste. They were introduced through a mutual friendship with the Surrealist artist Oscar Dominguez.
In 1937, she moved to Paris with Péret, sealing herself from any return to Franco's Spain since she had republican ties. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She initially considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life.
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. Her third, and last, important relationship was to Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and he gave her the support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.
After 1949 Varo developed her mature style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on masonite panels she prepared herself. Although her colors have the blended resonance of the oil medium, her brushwork often involved many fine strokes of paint laid closely together - a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. She died at the height of her career from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963.
Her work continues to achieve successful retrospectives at major sites in Mexico and the United States. Currently, the ownership of 39 of her paintings, first loaned and then given by Gruen to Mexico City's Museum of Modern Art in 1999 is in dispute. Varo's niece Beatriz Varo Jimenez of Valencia, Spain, claims Gruen had no rights to those works. Gruen, now 91, claims he inherited no works from Varo, who died intestate. Varo never divorced the husband she married in Spain in 1930: a court denied Gruen's request in 1992 to be given inheritance rights as the artist's common-law husband. He and his wife, Alexandra, whom he married in 1965, acquired all the paintings given to the museum on the open market after Varo's death and are therefore his to give. He said he gave the only painting in Varo's studio at the time of her death, "Still Life Reviving," to the artist's mother. The work was auctioned at Sotheby's New York in 1994 for $574,000.
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, notable 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 Angles, the Virgin of Los Remedios, promising to name her first daughter after the saint.
The Varo family left Anglès in 1913 when Varo was only 5. Varo spent her childhood experiencing different places and cultures. From Anglès the family moved to Cadiz where he father was appointed the king of Spain’s economic affairs representative in Morocco. The family then moved to Larache, a town in northern Morocco and finally settled in Madrid in 1917. 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 covenant school- and 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.
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 she enrolled in the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy in Madrid, the alma mater of Salvador Dali and other renowned artists. Varo got her diploma as a drawing teacher in 1930. While in Madrid, Varo had her initial introduction to Surrealism through lectures, exhibitions, films and theater. She was a regular visitor to the Prado Museum and took particular interest in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, most notably The Garden of Earthly Delights.
In 1930 Varo married fellow painter and former schoolmate, Gerardo Lizarraga. The couple moved to Paris immediately after their wedding and remained there for a year.
After spending a year in Paris, Varo moved to Barcelona and formed her first artistic circle of friends, which included Josep-Lluis Florit, Oscar Dominguez and Esteban Frances. Varo soon separated from her husband and shared a studio with Frances in a neighborhood filled with young avant-garde artists. The summer of 1935 marked Varo’s formal invitation into Surrealism when French surrealist Marcel Jean arrived in Barcelona. That same year along with Jean and his artist friends, Dominguez and Frances, Varo created a surrealist game that was meant to explore the subconscious association of participants by pairing different images at random. These associations were called cadavres exquis, meaning exquisite corpses, and perfectly illustrated the principle Andre Breton wrote in his Surrealist manifestos. Varo soon joined a collective of artists and writers, called the Logicofobistas, who had an interest in Surrealism and wanted to unite art together with metaphysics while resisting logic and reason. Varo exhibited with this group in 1936 at the Galeria Catalonia although she recognized they were not pure Surrealists.
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.
Varo shared a studio in Paris with Benjamin Peret and Esteban Frances. It was through Peret that she met Andre Breton and the Surrealist circle, which included Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Roberto Matta and Max Ernst among others. Shortly after arriving in France, Varo took part in the International Surrealist exhibition in Paris and Amsterdam in 1938. She drew vignettes for the Dictionnaire abrege du surrealisme and the magazines Trajectoire du Reve, 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 Drawings), 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.
The Surrealist Circle fell apart when WWII broke out and Hitler’s troups invaded Paris. Varo was imprisoned but there is no information as to where or for how long because she refused to speak about the experience. On November 20, 1941 Varo, along with Peret and Rubinstein, boarded the Serpa Pinto in Marseilles to flee war-torn Europe and find refuge in Mexico.
Varo’s imagination flourished while living in Mexico City, this resulted in a series of disturbing and puzzling paintings. The work she produced earned her recognition as one of the greatest painters in Mexico during the twentieth century. Varo was soon a part of an artistic circle of European refugees that included Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna who became close friends of Varo. Carrington and Varo read and discussed books on alchemy, witchcraft, magic, mythology, and Kabbalah. They also shared their dreams and discovered their new home together. The collaboration between these two first resulted in two plays, but became more evident in their paintings as they addressed similar concepts.
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 also influenced by styles as diverse as those of Francisco Goya, El Greco, Picasso, and Braque. While André Breton was a formative influence in her understanding of Surrealism, some of her paintings bear an uncanny resemblance to the Surrealist creations of the modern Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico.
In Mexico, she was influenced by pre-Columbian art.
Varo's painting The Lovers served as inspiration for some of the images used by Madonna in the music video for her 1995 single "Bedtime Story".
Varo was influenced by a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western. She turned with equal interest to the ideas of C. G. Jung as to the theories of G. I. 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.
The male surrealists almost never saw their female counterparts as capable artists; therefore, the female surrealists were forced to find ways of working within the restrictions of the surrealist misconceived definition of woman, while still trying to refute it. Varo does this through her images of women in confined spaces.
Later in her career, Varo’s characters developed into her emblematic androgynous figures with heart-shaped faces, large and lonely eyes, and the aquiline noses that mimic her own features. 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.
When Remedios Varo died of a heart attack in Mexico City in 1963, the art world lamented their loss in her sudden death. 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 brand 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. |
 Remedios Varo Uranga (Décembre 16, 1908 - Octobre 8, 1963) était un Espagnol-mexicaine, para-peintre surréaliste et anarchiste. Elle est née María de los Remedios Varo y Alicia Rodriga Uranga à Anglès, une petite ville dans la province de Gérone, en Espagne en 1908. En 1924, elle a étudié à l'Académie de San Fernando de Madrid. Au cours de la guerr...
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 Remedios Varo Uranga (16. Dezember 1908 - 8. Oktober 1963) war ein spanisch-mexikanischen, para-surrealistischer Maler und Anarchist. Sie wurde María de los Remedios Varo Rodriga Alicia y Uranga in Angles, einer kleinen Stadt in der Provinz Girona, Spanien 1908 geboren. Im Jahr 1924 studierte sie an der Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. Während d...
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 Remedios Varo Uranga (16 dicembre 1908 - 8 ottobre 1963) è stato un ispano-messicana, para-pittore surrealista e anarchico. E 'nata María de los Remedios Varo Rodriga Alicia y Uranga in Anglès, un piccolo paese della provincia di Girona, in Spagna nel 1908. Nel 1924 ha studiato presso l'Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. Durante la guerra civile s...
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 Remedios Varo Uranga (16 diciembre 1908 a 8 octubre 1963) fue un español-mexicano, para-el pintor surrealista y anarquistas. Ella nació María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga en Anglès, un pequeño pueblo en la provincia de Girona, España en 1908. En 1924 estudió en la Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. Durante la guerra civil española ...
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 Remedios Varo Уранга (16 декабря 1908 - 8 октября 1963) был испано-мексиканский, пара-художник-сюрреалист и анархистов. Родилась Мария де лос Ремедиос Алисия Rodriga Varo у Уранга в углах, маленьком городке в провинции Жирона, Испания в 1908 году. В 1924 году она училась в Академии Сан-Фернандо-де-Мадрид. Во время гражданской войны в Испании она бе...
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 雷梅迪奥斯VARO乌兰加（12月16日，1908年 - 1963年10月8日）是一家西班牙，墨西哥，段超现实主义画家和无政府主义。她出生的玛丽亚· 德洛斯雷梅迪奥斯艾丽西亚Rodriga VARO在角ÿ乌兰加，于1908年在西班牙赫罗纳省小城镇。于1924年，她就读于中国科学院圣费尔南多· 马德里。西班牙内战期间，她逃到巴黎，在那里她被大大超现实主义运动的影响。她遇到了她的第二任丈夫（第一赫拉尔多· 利扎拉加，一个画家，谁发现她去世后，她从来没有离婚），在巴塞罗那的法国超现实主义诗人本杰明Péret。在那里，她是一个艺术团体Logicophobiste成员。他们介绍了通过彼此间的友谊与超现实主义画家奥斯卡· 多明格斯。 在1937年，她移居到巴...
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 Remedios Varo Uranga (16 de dezembro de 1908 - 8 de outubro de 1963) foi um espanhol mexicano, pintor para-surrealista e anarquista. Ela nasceu María de los Remedios Varo y Alicia Rodriga Uranga em Anglès, uma pequena cidade na província de Girona, Espanha, em 1908. Em 1924 ela estudou na Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. Durante a Guerra Civil E...
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 レメディオスバロUranga（1908年12月16日 - 1963年10月8日）はスペイン、メキシコ、パラ - 超現実主義の画家とアナーキストであった。彼女は角度のマリア· デ· ロス· レメディオスアリシアRodrigaバロY Uranga、1908年にジローナ、スペインの州の小さな町で生まれました。 1924年に彼女はアカデミア· デ· サン· フェルナンド· デ· マドリッドで学びました。彼女は非常に超現実主義運動の影響を受けたところスペイン内戦の間に彼女はパリに逃げた。彼女は二番目の夫（最初は、それが彼女の死の後に発見されたジェラルド· Lizarraga、画家であった、彼...
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