I was most grateful to seminarist Lisa Hirmer for bringing to the table some information about a remarkable Spanish painter named Remedios Varo—about whom I had previously known nothing whatsoever . Here is Lisa’s brief introduction to Varfo’s work--and a couple of astonishing paintings:

A few years ago I had the fortuitous good-luck to discover the works of Remedios Varo by way of a thin Spanish paperback that my Grandmother had given to me within an eclectic pile of newspaper clippings and magazines brought back from Mexico. Unable to read the Spanish text, I knew virtually nothing about the artist but was completely enchanted by her beautifully enigmatic paintings of strange worlds and lonely mutant people.

I have since learned more about Varo’s life and work and although I would like to write something about the solitude of characters that wear the artist’s own face – or about Varo’s clever humor, or perhaps about the blurring of the human with the inhuman and the natural with the technological – I think I am without the skill to adequately do so and will therefore just let her works speak for themselves. As a brief introduction I can however say that Varo trained as an artist in Spain during the 1920s and was closely allied with the Surrealist movement first there and then in Paris; it was not until the 50s and early 60s however, that after having been twice displaced by war she produced her mature work while living in Mexico.

Source:
Janet A. Kaplan. Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2000)


Images:
1. Spiral Transit, 1962
2. The Flutist, 1955