1. Maria de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was a Spanish and Mexican surrealist painter.
49 Facts About Remedios Varo
1. 2.
Maria de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was born on 16 December 1908 in Angles, a small town in the province of Girona, in Catalonia.
3.
Remedios Varo had two surviving siblings: an older brother Rodrigo, and a younger brother Luis.
4.
Remedios Varo's mother, Ignacia Uranga y Bergareche, was born in Argentina to Basque parents and her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo, was from Cordoba in Andalusia.
5.
When Remedios Varo was a young child, her family moved frequently throughout Spain and North Africa to follow her father's work as a hydraulic engineer.
6.
Remedios Varo's father encouraged her artistic endeavors, taking her to museums and having her meticulously copy his diagrams.
7.
Remedios Varo read authors such as Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as mystical literature and Eastern spiritual works.
8.
In 1924, Remedios Varo enrolled at the prestigious Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, a school known for rigid and exacting training.
9.
Remedios Varo became attracted to the surreal, finding inspiration in the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, and El Greco which she visited at the Museo del Prado.
10.
In Paris, Remedios Varo enrolled at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and quickly dropped out, realizing she did not want to remain within the confines of formal education.
11.
Remedios Varo often played the popular Surrealist game cadavre exquis with her friends, and sent works she had made via the game to fellow artist and friend Marcel Jean for circulation in Paris.
12.
Never formally a part of the Surrealist group, Remedios Varo nonetheless participated in the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition and subsequent International Surrealist Exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and New York.
13.
Remedios Varo's work was often republished in Surrealist periodicals, including Minotaure.
14.
In 1939, the Nationalists claimed victory in Spain and Francisco Franco disallowed anyone associated with the Republicans from entering the country; Remedios Varo became permanently unable to return to her home and was isolated from her family.
15.
Remedios Varo was imprisoned as well, at some point in 1940, for her relationship with Peret.
16.
Remedios Varo never spoke about this experience; the length and location of her internment and the conditions she faced are unknown.
17.
Over time, much of Remedios Varo's circle made it to Marseille, where they shared their limited funds among each other and met nightly in cafes.
18.
Remedios Varo arrived in Mexico City in late 1941, part of a large migration of Spanish intellectuals and artists.
19.
Leonora Carrington, whom Remedios Varo had previously met in Paris, would become Remedios Varo's closest friend.
20.
Remedios Varo took care of several birds and stray cats.
21.
Remedios Varo made her most consistent living from producing illustrations for Bayer advertisements.
22.
In 1947 Peret wanted to return to France, while Remedios Varo wished to stay in Mexico, which by then she viewed as her home.
23.
Peret moved back to Paris, and Remedios Varo started a relationship with a French pilot and fellow refugee named Jean Nicolle.
24.
Remedios Varo, staying in Caracas and Maracay, studied mosquitoes with a microscope and produced drawings of them for a Public Ministry of Health campaign against malaria.
25.
Remedios Varo returned to Mexico City in 1949, after struggling to obtain funds for travel back.
26.
In 1952 Remedios Varo married Austrian refugee Walter Gruen, and ended her career in commercial graphic design in favor of her personal art.
27.
The success of the 1955 solo exhibition allowed Remedios Varo to establish a waiting list for buyers.
28.
Remedios Varo painted her final finished canvas, titled Still Life Reviving, in 1963.
29.
Carrington and Remedios Varo shared an interest in the occult and magic, and they found inspiration in the folk practices of Mexico.
30.
Remedios Varo considered surrealism as an "expressive resting place within the limits of Cubism, and as a way of communicating the incommunicable".
31.
Remedios Varo differed from other Surrealists because of her constant use of religion in her work.
32.
Remedios Varo turned to a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western, for influence.
33.
Remedios Varo was influenced by her belief in magic and animistic faiths.
34.
Remedios Varo was very connected to nature and believed that there was strong relation between the plant, human, animal, and mechanical world.
35.
Remedios Varo was aware of the importance of biology, chemistry, physics, and botany, and thought it should blend together with other aspects of life.
36.
Remedios Varo 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, witchcraft, alchemy, and the I Ching.
37.
Remedios Varo saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.
38.
Some of Remedios Varo's art elevated women, while still falling under the category of Surrealism, but it was not necessarily her intention for her work to address problems in gender inequality.
39.
Remedios Varo extensively used graphite-on-paper preparatory drawings to plan her paintings; she created many drawings independent of painting.
40.
Remedios Varo then transferred the sketch onto her prepared painting surface.
41.
When painting, Remedios Varo often painted the entire background environment before adding the figures or other prominent elements she had planned.
42.
Remedios Varo used glazing and various texturing techniques popular among Surrealists such as stippling, hatching, blotting, decalcomania, and soufflage to create atmospheric effects.
43.
Mexican philosopher Juliana Gonzalez, a friend of Remedios Varo's, writes that an element of "Romantic optimism" in her art distinguishes Remedios Varo from the broader Surrealist movement.
44.
Remedios Varo often painted images of women in confined spaces, achieving a sense of isolation.
45.
Remedios Varo often depicted herself through these key features in her paintings, regardless of the figure's gender.
46.
Many of Remedios Varo's works depict animals, primarily cats and birds.
47.
Remedios Varo frequently depicted hybrid creatures which combined cats, owls, or women.
48.
Remedios Varo's work focuses on psychoanalysis and its role in society and female agency.
49.
Remedios Varo's artwork is well known in Mexico, but is not as well known throughout the rest of the world.