Remedios Varo stood at the intersection of curiosity and mystery, weaving elements of science, occult philosophy, and surreal imagery into a singular artistic voice. Born in Catalonia and shaped by early exposure to engineering through her father, she cultivated a fascination for the mechanisms of nature and the cosmos. That foundation later merged with her reading of speculative fiction and her studies of astrology, alchemy, and psychology. Her art never satisfied purely rational boundaries, instead pressing toward realms of symbolic logic and unseen possibility.
After political upheaval and exile, Varo settled in Mexico City, immersing herself in artistic circles that offered a fertile ground for experimental thought. There she contributed to Surrealist networks while expanding her own visual language, anchored in metaphor and layered meaning. Her works often show figures engaged in ritual or machinery — an act of transformation cast as both scientific experiment and poetic mystery. Her technique also reflected this duality: she would begin with preparatory drawings or cartoons, then overlay and disrupt them with spontaneous gestures, textures, and materials that complicate clarity and dispel precision.
One notable exhibition in 2023, titled Science Fictions, assembles over sixty of her paintings, drawings, and small sculptures — the first major presentation in the U.S. in more than two decades. The show highlights how she drew on ecological, astronomical, and metaphysical themes, blending them into strange, luminous narratives. In Creation of the Birds, for example, a hybrid creature paints winged beings that seem to take flight under a stellar beam. In Useless Science, or The Alchemist, a hooded figure turns a crank linked to swirling gears, producing a pale fluid in a process part machine, part incantation.
Her methodistic layering of organic textures, scraped or blotted surfaces, combined with occasional inclusions like mother-of-pearl, intensifies the dreamlike quality of her images. She was not satisfied with mere illusion; she sought material resonance. Her works harbor resonances of change and metamorphosis, suggesting that art itself might act as alchemy. As one scholar involved in the exhibition notes, she read about alchemy and sometimes envisioned art as a form of symbolic transmutation, with painting itself as a catalyst.
Though Varo’s name may remain less prominent in some Western art circles, her impact resonates powerfully across Latin America and beyond. She is often paired with contemporaries like Leonora Carrington as part of a trio of women who stretched Surrealism into new, mystical terrains. The Science Fictions exhibit not only underscores her technical mastery and intellectual breadth but also reclaims her place within art history’s deeper conversations about how the visible and the invisible entwine.
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