Remedios Varo
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga (known as Remedios Varo, 16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963) was a Spanish [1][2][3] surrealist painter working in Spain, France, and Mexico.
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Varo and the second or maternal family name is Uranga.
Remedios Varo
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga
16 December 1908
8 October 1963 (aged 54)
Spanish
Escuela de Bellas Artes (1930)
Painting
Gerardo Lizárraga (1930–???)
Benjamin Péret (1936–1959)
Walter Gruen (1952–1963)
Varo had a difficult life, struggling against poverty and fleeing from war in Spain and then France. In the last thirteen years of her life she found financial stability in Mexico, painting productively until her sudden death in 1963.[4]
Early life and education (1908–1930)[edit]
Remedios Varo Uranga was born in 1908 in Anglès, a small town in the province of Girona (Catalonia), in northeastern Spain.[5]
Varo's mother, Ignacia Uranga Bergareche, had been born to Basque parents in Argentina; she was a devout Roman Catholic. Her mother named her newborn in honor of the patron saint of Anglès, Virgen de los Remedios (the "Virgin of Remedies"), after a recently deceased older sister.[6][5][7] Varo had two surviving siblings: an older brother Rodrigo, and a younger brother Luis.[6]
Varo's father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo (Cejalvo),[8] was a hydraulic engineer. Because of his work, the family moved to different locations across Spain and North Africa.[9] Varo's father recognized her artistic talents early on and would have her copy the technical drawings of his work with their straight lines, radii, and perspectives, which she reproduced meticulously.[10]: 14 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 texts on mysticism and philosophy. Those first few years of her life left an impression on Varo that would later show up as motifs in her work such as machinery, furnishings, and artifacts. Romanesque and Gothic architecture, unique to Anglès, also showed up in her later artistic production.
Varo was given the basic education at a convent school that was typical for young ladies of a good upbringing at the time – but this experience fostered her rebellious tendencies. Varo took a critical view of religion, rejecting the religious ideology of her childhood education, and instead hewed to the liberal and universalist ideas that her father instilled in her.[5] Varo drew throughout her childhood and painted her first painting at age twelve.[11]
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 Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid, under the tutelage of Manuel Benedito.[11] This school emphasized traditional academic study, including painstaking development of technical artistic skills. Many renowned artists were alumni, including Salvador Dalí (though he was expelled for insubordination).[10]: 13–38 Varo was awarded her diploma as a drawing teacher in 1930.[5]
Varo also exhibited in a collective exhibition organized by the Unión de Dibujantes de Madrid. Surrealistic elements were already apparent in her work at school, at the same time that French surrealism was having an early influence on Spanish surrealism; she also took an early interest in French surrealism.[7] 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, as well as other artists, such as Francisco de Goya.
The work that Varo created from 1926 to 1935 solidified her career as an artist, but was not seen by the public.[8]: 15–53
Spain and France (1930–1941)[edit]
Varo met her first husband Gerardo Lizárraga at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, and married him in San Sebastián in 1930.[11] This marriage allowed her to flee her hometown and exercise her independence.[8]: 15–53 The couple left Spain for Paris to be nearer to where much of Europe's art scene was.[5][7]
After a year, Lizárraga got a job in Spain and the couple moved to Barcelona, at that time a European center of the artistic avant-garde. Both Lizárraga and Varo worked for the J. Walter Thompson advertising company.[8] In 1935, Varo participated in a drawing exhibition in Madrid, which displayed her Composición (Composition).[8]
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 Josep-Lluis Florit, Óscar Domínguez, and Esteban Francés.[7] Varo soon shared a studio with Francés, an artist and activist, in a neighborhood filled with young avant-garde artists. She separated from her husband and moved back to Paris with both Francés and the poet Benjamin Péret in order to escape from the Spanish Civil War. Varo never divorced Lizárraga and had different partners/lovers throughout her life; but she also remained friends with all of them, in particular with her husband Lizárraga and Péret. By 1939, victorious Francisco Franco forces had banned leftist exiles from returning to Spain.
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 Francés, Varo took part in various surrealist games such as cadavres exquis ("exquisite corpses") that were meant to explore the subconscious association of participants by pairing different images at random. These cadavres exquis perfectly illustrated the principles André Breton wrote of in his Surrealist manifestos. Varo soon joined a collective of artists and writers, called the Grupo Logicofobista, 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 Galería Catalonia although she recognized they were not pure Surrealists.[5]
It was through the poet Benjamin Péret that Remedios Varo 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; 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 (Game of Communicated Drawing), of works with Breton and Péret. The series was much like a game, which began with an initial drawing, which was shown to someone for 3 seconds, after which that person tried to recreate what they had been shown. The cycle continued with the showing of their drawing to the next person, and so on. Apparently, this led to very interesting psychological implications that Varo later used in her paintings many times.
Compared to her later time in Mexico, she produced very little work while working in Paris. This may have been due to her status as a femme enfant and the way women were never taken seriously as surrealist artists. She said, reflecting on her time in Paris, "Yes, I attended those meetings where they talked a lot and one learned various things; sometimes I participated with works in their exhibitions; I was not old enough nor did I have the aplomb to face up to them, to a Paul Éluard, a Benjamin Péret, or an André Breton. I was with an open mouth within this group of brilliant and gifted people. I was together with them because I felt a certain affinity. Today I do not belong to any group; I paint what occurs to me and that is all."[10]: 17
In Paris, Varo lived in poverty, working odd jobs and having to copy and even to forge paintings in order to get by.[7] After World War II began, Péret was imprisoned in 1940 by the French government for his political beliefs; Varo was also imprisoned as his romantic partner. A few days after Varo was freed, the Germans seized Paris, and she was forced to join other refugees leaving the city. Péret was freed soon after, and the two escaped south to Marseilles.[12][13][7] On 20 November 1941 Varo, along with Péret and Rubinstein, boarded the Serpa Pinto in Marseilles to flee Nazi-dominated Europe. The terror she experienced at this time remained as a significant psychological scar.
Relationship with Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna[edit]
Among all the refugees that were forced to flee from Europe to Mexico City during and after World War II, 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 the Colonia Roma district of Mexico City.
Varo and Carrington had previously met through André 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 by Edward James, a British poet and patron of the surrealist movement.
All three attended the meetings of followers of the Russian mystics Peter Ouspensky and George Gurdjieff.[22] 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 ideas of the Russian mystics, the women often ridiculed the practices and behavior of those in the circle. The trio were sometimes referred to as "the three witches", because of their interest in the occult and spiritual practices.[4]
After becoming friends, Varo and Carrington began writing collaboratively and wrote two unpublished plays together: El santo cuerpo grasoso and Lady Milagra – the latter unfinished. Using a technique similar to that of the game called Cadavre Exquis, they took 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 was extremely similar, there was one major difference: Varo's painting was about line and form, while Carrington's work was about tone and color.[23] Varo and Carrington would remain extremely close friends for 20 years, until Varo's death in 1963.[24]
Interpretations of Varo's artwork[edit]
Varo often painted images of women in confined spaces, achieving a sense of isolation. While Varo did not deem her own work feminist, "her work stretches the limits of and directly challenges confabulated, patriarchal ideals of femininity".[20] Also, Varo's work redacts male interpretation of the female body. Her works focus on female empowerment and agency. The androgynous figures characteristic of her later work also challenge gender in that the figures do not fall neatly into gender normative categories, and often could be of either sex, creating a sense of the "middle area" between the two sexes and of the gender norms placed on them. One critic states, "Because the female body, a sacred erotic artistic space for men, is transformed by [Varo] into nongendered shapes and forms, namely animals and insects, the space becomes freed from monolithic sexual interpretation".[20]
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.[10]: 13–38 "Varo tends to not play out personal strife on the canvas but rather portrays herself in various roles in surreal dreamscapes".[20] "It is Varo herself who is the alchemist or explorer. In creating these characters, she is defining her identity".[25]
Varo's work also focuses on psychoanalysis and its role in society and female agency. In speaking on Woman 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 in Lacanian terms the official entrance into culture: verbal Language".[20]