Woman's Art Inc.

Remedios Varo: Voyages and Visions

Author(s): Janet Kaplan
Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1980 - Winter, 1981), pp. 13-18
Published by: Woman's Art Inc.
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Remedios Varo:
Voyages and Visions
?JANET KAPLAN
In the spring of 1956, an unknown expatriate Spanish
painter, Remedios Varo (1913-1963), had her first solo
exhibition at the Galeria Diana in Mexico City. The show
was an instant success, drawing large audiences and
enthusiastic reviews. The work was so immediately
popular, and the demand for it grew so rapidly, that from
her first exhibition there were waiting lists of potential
buyers. Her retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in
1971 drew the largest audiences in Mexican history. As its
organizer, Carmen Barreda, points out with pride, even the
Mexican giants Rivera and Siquieros never drew such
crowds;1indeed, the exhibition had to be extended. Varo's
popularity persists to this day, and conversation about her
in Mexico invariably involves discussion of her enormous
value in the art market and her continuing appeal among
the people. Yet, despite this extraordinary success, Varo is
virtually unknown in the United States and Europe. Even
within Mexico her work is not owned by any public
institution; it exists only in private collections,
unavailable for public viewing.2 The only significant
study of the artist is in Spanish and was published in
Mexico.3
Remedios Varo believed in magic. She had an animistic
faith in the power of objects and in the interrelatedness of
plant, animal, human, and mechanical worlds. The story
is told that one evening on a Mexican street she found a
plant being sold that produced fruits that looked like eggs.
Fascinated, she brought one to her apartment, set it in the
center of her plant-filled terrace in the moonlight, and
placed her tubes of paint around it. She felt that this
special plant, her paints, and the moon were harmonious
together and that their conjunction would prove
auspicious for the next day of painting.4
Deeply superstitious and strongly attuned to nature,
Varo held a mystical belief in forces beyond the self, in
powers beyond that of the individual that can influence
and direct events. She was an intelligent, sensitive,
humorous woman of prodigious skill and imagination who
depicted her dreams and visions on canvas. Yet as a person
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she remained elusive, revealing only glimpses of herself
through her work:
I do not wish to talk aboutmyself becauseI holdvery
deeplythe belief that what is importantis the work,
not the person.5
From her work one can weave together the fragments of
her various worlds-the world of Spain into which she was
born, the worlds of France and Mexico which she adopted,
and the world of her imagination. She worked in a surreal
framework in which autobiographical details became the
source for her images and symbols. As most of her
personages bear the delicate heart-shaped face with large
almond eyes, long sharp nose, and thick mane of hair that
marked the artist's own identity, one comes to see the
personae she created as schematic self-portraits.
The most overtly autobiographical work is a series of
three paintings designed as a triptych. In the first, Toward
the Tower (1961), Varo shows herself as one of a group of
identical, uniformed girls bicycling away from the beehive
tower in which they are held captive, led by a "Mother
Superior" figure, an ominous man, and hovering guardian
birds. In this painting Varo reflects on aspects of her early
life. The youngest of three children and the only girl, she
was raised in a conservative Catholic family bound by the
strictest conventions of Spanish tradition. She was
educated first in convent schools and later in traditional
art academies, both of which she felt offered her firm
technical training but stifled her personal freedom and
artistic spontanaeity. From an early age Varo rebelled
against group regimentation and is the one "rebel"seen in
the painting. Among the group mesmerized by its leaders,
she places this girl in the first row, her gaze reaching out,
resisting what Varo termed "the hypnosis."6
In the central image of the autobiographical triptych,
Embroidering the Earth's Mantle (1961; Fig. 1), Varo
offers an alternate version of the Creation.7 The same
young convent girls, here captive in a tower that looks like
a medieval scriptorium, embroider the world according to
14 Woman's Art Journal
the dictates of the "Great Master." This hooded figure
reads from an instruction manual and stirs a boiling broth
in an alchemical vessel from which the girls draw their
embroidery thread. In the background a shrouded figure
accompanies their work on a simple wooden flute. In this
comment on the idea of the Creation, Varo has included a
subtle surprise. That same rebellious girl has
"embroidered a trick in which one can see her together
with her lover."8 She has embroidered, in the figure of her
lover, the person with whom she plans to escape her
confinement.
In the third panel, The Escape (1962), the title attests to
her success. Here she is shown with her lover fleeing to the
mountains. Again, fantasy builds on autobiography.
Remedios did escape the restrictions of her family and
schooling at the age of 19 by marrying Gerardo Lizarraga;
an artist, while both were attending the Academia de San
Fernando in Madrid.9(The marriage in fact, seems to have
been a way to legitimize leaving her family, for Varo soon
left Lizarraga to pursue her dream of the bohemian artist's
life.) Here the couple escape in a vehicle that looks like an
inverted umbrella floating on a foggy mist. Their capes
billow out behind them, catching the wind and acting as
sails. This vehicle is one of many created by Varo, each
differing in design from the others, but all bearing the
Varo touch of fantastic yet plausible detail.
Varo's fascination with journeys in strange vehicles to
unknown destinations reflects a life marked by travel. As a
child she traveled with her family throughout Spain and
North Africa, accompanying her father in his work as a
hydraulic engineer. Under his rigorous tutelage she copied
detailed drawings and diagrams to learn the techniques of
mechanical drawing. She also read avidly, immersing
herself in the adventurous voyages described by Jules
Verne and the mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe. From these
experiences, and perhaps in prophetic foreknowledge, she
FIG. 1. Embroideringthe Earth's Mantle (1961). Courtesyof
Walter Gruen.
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developed a fascination with the invention of fantastic
means of locomotion.
As a young adult, Varo was subject to the imperatives
of both the Spanish Civil War and World War II, suffering
years of flight, escape, and exile. Having moved from
Madrid to Barcelona to become part of the more avant-
garde artistic life in Cataluna, she met and married the
French Surrealist poet, Benjamin Peret, who had come to
Spain in 1936 to fight on the side of the anarchists. They
fled Spain together to escape the Fascist takeover and
settled among the Surrealists in Paris. Within five years
they again had to flee, first from occupied Paris to the free
port of Marseilles, and then from Marseilles, under the
most hazardous circumstances, joining numerous other
refugees on one of the last ships to be allowed to leave
German-occupied France. In 1942, after a harrowing ocean
crossing, they again relocated, this time in Mexico, where
Varo remained for the rest of her life.'0
The journey, for Varo, had a profound significance,
spiritually as well as psychologically. Exiled from her
homeland, she embarked on a spiritual pilgrimage,
committing herself to a search for self-knowledge,
restlessly looking in any direction that might offer new
ways of knowing. Encouraged by her experience among
the Surrealists, she looked to dreams, alchemy, astrology,
mysticism, magic, the occult, and science-opening herself
to any avenue by which she might explore the unknown in
herself and in the universe. This exploration became a
dominant theme in her work.
The fantastic vehicles that appear in many of Varo's
paintings are often powered by wind and wheels, with
sophisticated systems of pulleys, pedals, rudders, and sails
that equip them to cross land, water, or air on their
journeys of exploration. In The Find (1956), a triple-tiered
boat with elaborate sails moves down- a darkened forest
river toward a pearl tlat shines in the distance. In Spiral
Transit (1962), a series of vehicles, each of differing design,
travel through a labyrinthian medieval city toward a
central tower. The course, spiralling inward, can be seen as
symbolic of her spiritual pilgrimage, a psychic journey
"inward through the unfolding levels of awareness ... "1
Varo seems to have felt a call to be awakened, to rise out
of the torpor of ordinary existence-out of the lethargy of
the crowd-to explore the possibilities of the universe in its
various and extraordinary manifestations. In this she felt
herself to be chosen. In The Call (1961; Fig. 2), she is
literally enlightened as light from a star to which she is
attached by her hair suffuses her body with an
otherwordly glow. She wears an alchemist's mortar
around her neck and carries a magical vessel. Joseph
Campbell described "the call" as the first stage of the
mythological journey, signifying "that destiny has
summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of
gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone
unknown."'2 Similarly for Varo's heroine, as she
emanates light she is propelled forward, her illumination
and movement in stark contrast to the gray, deadened
figures of a society asleep within the walls that surround
her. She has been summoned and chosen to carry the
 Woman's Art Journal 15

magic elixir as an initiate in the search for transcendence.

Alone, isolated in her awareness, she embarks on a quest
that demands courage and determination.
Such courage is a mark of the Varo heroine. In
Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River (1959; Fig.
3), the voyager is a determined woman on a solitary
journey to find "the source." Although she is dressed
humorously in an English raincoat and bowler hat and
carries wings overhead that seem to have been borrowed
from a theatrical production, the seriousness of her
purpose is not compromised. Even the playfulness of her
vehicle, a vest-coat transformed into a fragile little ship
with notes in the side pocket and compass instead of
watchfob, does not negate the intensity of her expression
or the sombre watchfulness of the dark birds that attend
her from the hollows of nearby trees. She is a woman,
independent and resolute, set out on a mission to find the
source. And what she finds, significantly, is that the
source is a simple wine glass set on a modest table in a
hollow tree. From the glass, liquid miraculously rises and
flows out, creating the very river on which she travels.
Again this image is double-edged-both fanciful and
autobiographical. The vest-coat boat and flooded woods
are wonderfully evocative dream-like images of
subconscious travel. They also refer to real travels that
Varo undertook in life, including a trip to Venezuela . . : 2.
FIG Waiter
Courtesy of Gruen
(where the Orinoco River flows) to join an unsuccessful FIG. 2. The Call (1961).Courtesyof WalterGruen.
expedition for gold. However, the search of Varo's
protagonist here must be understood primarily on a experiencing. Whether Varo actually sought psychiatric
psychological and spiritual level: here the gold is help is undocumented. She is known to have written semi-
philosopher's gold, the alchemical liquid of serious letters to psychiatrists whose names she drew from
transformation. As alchemy is both a scientific study and the phone book, describing imaginary crises and asking
a mystical search-a chemical attempt at transformation for help.
of materials and a personal search for transformation of
Although Varo may have been skeptical of the benefits
the psyche-so Varo here uses exploration of the river's of psychiatry, she was committed to active searching for
source as a metaphor for the search for the self,
growth and personal awareness. More than any pain
enlightenment, the truth. Venturing deep into a flooded resulting from the search, she feared the paralysis that
forest she has found a hollowed log shrine in which a
apathy would invite. She warns of this in Mimesis (1960).
sacred vessel overflows with magical liquid. She is an A woman, isolated, passive, and immobile, having lost all
explorer, looking into nature as into herself for the personal identity, is overwhelmed by the energy of the
possibilities that the world might offer. domestic sitting-room furniture that surrounds her. The
As a 20th century European deeply interested in the inanimate is animated and the furniture is
search for the self, Varo could not help but be influenced by anthropomorphized, an expression of Varo's belief in the
the theories of Freud and Jung. Throughout her work there living powers of all objects. Varo describes this woman's
is evidence of a symbolic use of images that can be situation as
interpreted in Jungian and Freudian terms. In Woman ... an unsettlingcase of mimesis;this womanis lost
Leaving the Psychoanalyst's Office (1961), Varo presents in her thoughts and has remainedmotionlessfor so
such symbology overtly. Here the protagonist exits from long that she is turninginto the armchair,her flesh
the office of "Dr. F.J.A." (Freud, Jung, Adler) and proceeds has becomejust like the cloth on the chair and her
to drop the disembodied head of her father into a small hands and feet arealreadyturnedwood,the furniture
circular well. This act, which Varo describes as "correct to gets boredand the armchairbites the table,the chair
do when leaving the psychoanalyst"13 is surely a reference in the backgroundinvestigates what the drawer
to her own maturation process in which she struggled to contains, and the cat which went out to hunt, is
frightenedand astonisheduponreturningas he sees
emerge from the domination of her imposing and the transformation.14
demanding father. As she prepares to discard her father's
head, she is able to drop one layer of her veil. However, just Although presented with humor, Mimesis emanates a
as the basket she carries holds yet more "psychological desperate tone of passivity. The very energy of the
waste," so other layers of veil remain, covering her mouth furniture in its lively interaction emphasizes the
and leaving her mute. An enclosing architecture submission of the woman, whose domesticated apathy
emphasizes the restriction and oppression she is surprises even the house cat. Just as the woman leaving

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16 Woman's Art Journal
FIG. 3. Explorationof the Sourcesof the OrinocoRiver(1959).
Courtesy of Walter Gruen.
the psychoanalyst was muted by her veil, so this woman is
silenced by her metamorphosis into the patterned fabric of
her chair.
Perhaps it was fear of such psychic paralysis that kept
Varo going in her search, opening her to various modes of
discovery. Besides alchemy and psychology, she also
turned to the physical sciences, recognizing in the newest
developments of biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
and botany, which she studied with avid curiosity, an
infinite world of possibilities. Understanding scientific
inquiry as analogous to spiritual pursuits, she felt that
science must not dominate, but rather must harmonize
with the forces of nature.
In The Unsubmissive Plant (1961) she makes this point
most emphatically. We are shown a scientist studying a
variety of botanical specimens for which theory has nearly
overtaken nature. These plants, so carefully nurtured,
grow branches of equations rather than foliage. The
scientist too is consumed by formulae; hair in the form of
mathematical equations grows out of a head filled with
numbers. All the plants seem electrified by their neatly
conceived formulae, except one. The plant being studied
with such perplexed concern has rebelled and followed
nature, rudely growing not numbers but foliage and a
single proud flower. Even this plant had attempted to
sprout formulae, but its only mathematical branch
withered, bearing the equation "Two plus two is almost
four." The Unsubmissive Plant offers us Varo's mixed
feelings about scientific study in a succinctly ironic image.
Science, in this case botany, which seeks to understand
nature through abstraction, grows greedy for control, and
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in the process of controlling, is alienated from the very
nature that was its starting point. As in Woman Leaving
the Psychoanalyst's Office, Varo may be expressing a
response to her father's looming presence in her life. As an
engineer, perhaps her father, too, was out of touch with
nature and attempted to overwhelm it with abstraction.
If Varo questioned the limited vision of a myopic
approach to science, she held greater hope for the union of
science with the arts, a union from which she expected
clearer insight. The image most revealing of that hoped for
insight is her Creation of the Birds (1958; Fig. 4). Here the
scientist/artist in the symbolic persona of Wisdom-the
owl-sits at a desk drawing a bird. Using primary colors
distilled in a vessel fed from the atmosphere, she draws
with a pen that is connected through a violin to her heart.
Moonlight captured and magnified through a triangular
lens illuminates the drawing, causing the drawn birds to
come to life and take flight out the window. Here is the true
meeting of art, science, and nature, each feeding the other
in a cycle symbolically represented by the two vases in the
corner which feed their contents back and forth to each
other.15Varo's choice of details emphasizes her meaning.
She uses an alchemical vessel, like the one in
Embroidering the Earth's Mantle, as the receptacle of
transformation in which is created the palette of
primaries-the "trinity" that is the foundation of all color
in art. By creating birds that fly off the page, she places
herself within the mythological tradition of Daedalus,
Hephaestus, and Pygmalion, all artists whose creations
were said to have come to life. This painting of an
owl/woman/artist/alchemist creating beauty and life
through the conjunction of color, light, sound, science, art,
and magic may be the very image to which Varo aspired in
her life.
As a young artist, Remedios (the full name by which she
was known in France) was at the very center of the
Surrealist circle in Paris in the 1930s. This contact proved
to be of mixed benefit. Varo's interest in alternative
realities, in the correspondences between animal,
vegetable, and mineral worlds, found theoretical
justification among the Surrealists. She shared with them
a similar vitality in viewing the world. However, Varo's
approach to her work differed greatly from the dictates of
Surrealist theory; she did not pursue, for example, the
Surrealist method of psychic automatism. Her works, all
carefully planned in advance, leave no room for the
intervention of chance in dictating imagery; the elements
are never juxtaposed in an accidental or arbitrary way.
Hers is never Lautreamont's chance encounter of sewing
machine and umbrella on a dissecting table.16 The
alternative universe to which Varo invites us is filled with
congruent and understandable details. Although events
she images may not happen in our everyday world, in her
world they are consistent and therefore quickly become
acceptable. Her objects are recognizable; we can
understand their function even if that function is not what
we have experienced. She has created a logical system in
which each aspect is part of a consistent whole. This sets
her work apart from most painting of the true Surrealist
school.

It was not only a differing approach to chance and to
the logical, however, that separated Varo from the
Surrealists. In a 1957 interview she described herself
among them:
Yes, I attendedthosemeetingswheretheytalkeda lot
and one 'learned various things; sometimes I
participatedwith works in their exhibitions; my
positionwas one of a timidandhumblelistener;I was
not old enoughnordidI have the aplombto faceupto
them, to a Paul Eluard, a Benjamin Peret, or an
AndreBreton.I was with an openmouthwithinthis
group of brilliant and gifted people.I was together
with thembecauseI felt a certainaffinity.TodayI do
not belong to any group;I paint what occursto me
and that is all.17
While Varo recalls her distance from the Surrealist
group as a function of youthful intimidation before
brilliance, it is, however, tempting to posit additional
explanations for her intimidation, and for her limited
productivity in those years. rhe work she produced in
France during the period, although technically assured,
seems derivative, eclectic, and lacking in stylistic
coherence or direction. Her personages look like skillfully
rendered representatives of the worlds of Ernst, Masson,
Brauner, Dominguez, Dali, de Chirico, andMagritte, many
of whom she numbered among her friends as well as her
sources.
As Gloria Orenstein has suggested, it was not just the
genius of the Surrealist theorists that was intimidating; it
was the very theories they propounded.18As the femme-
enfant, femme-fatale, muse, and goddess described by
Breton and Peret, woman, although put on a pedestal as a
figure of central importance, was being relegated to the
status of object-object of desire, of inspiration, of fear, of
devotion. Such status, although seemingly flattering, is
ultimately limiting; it does not offer women claim to an
independent identity. It is woman as defined in man's
terms-defined as Other instead of Self.19Thus, the women
among the Surrealists had to struggle to find personal
definitions and imagery through which to express
themselves as autonomous creative beings.
The imagery that Varo later offers us in her mature
work20is a personal statement of the artist's definitions of
herself. Here she creates a wide variety of roles for women:
they can be explorers, scientists, mystics, and are
sometimes more androgynous than female. Varo, as an
artist, aligns herself within that community. She
expressed herself within her characters. Their searches,
discoveries, fears, and disappointments are hers. In
exploring their possibilities she explores her own. Yet she
keeps her characters, and surely herself, from an
overbearing sanctimoniousness through her penetrating
sense of humor. Courageous and self-sufficient, she is
neither muse nor catalyst to someone else's creativity. She
is creative in her own right, giving form to her own
experience, defining "woman as she is and as she
dreams."21
Mexico proved significant to Varo in several ways as a
place to grow and mature as an artist. First, it was a safe
haven, a place of peace isolated from the wars in Europe.
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Woman's Art Journal 17
"For me it was impossible to paint among such anxiety. In
this country [Mexico] I have found the tranquility that I
have always searched for."22 She also had financial
security in her marriage to Walter Gruen. Finally, in her
life with Gruen, she could give up the commercial art work
she had pursued to make a living,23 and devote herself fully
to her own artistic vision. The first showing of Varo's
mature work in Mexico City occurred in the mid-1950s. The
public responded eagerly to her delicate fineness of touch
and exquisite concern for detail put to the service of images
that expressed a personal narrative of visions and dreams
as well as a rich sense of humor. Perhaps the enthusiastic
response reflected an audience tiring of the hegemony of
the famous muralists with their loose broad style and
didactic social realist themes.
Still Life Being Resuscitated (1963), is the last work
Varo completed before her sudden death at the age of fifty
on October 8, 1963.25It is also her only known painting
that included no human figure. Perhaps prophetically,
Varo expressed the ultimate union in the cyclical rebirth of
nature. Here, a table covered with a cloth, eight plates,
fruits, and a candlestick has entered into movement
stimulated by an invisible energy. As this tableau comes to
life, its contents are swept into a whirlwind so that the
fruits become planets orbiting around a sun represented
symbolically by the candle flame. In the course of orbiting,
some fruits collide, explode, and send their seeds back to
earth. (This is perhaps the "big bang" that science
hypothesizes was the generator of life.) As the seeds reach
the floor, they magically germinte, sprout roots, and bear
small plants. Dragonflies that have been witness to the
event fly out to spread the news. The title, which can be
translated literally from the Spanish as "dead nature
(naturaleza muerta) being resuscitated," ironically
declares resurrection as the theme.
B^'^^sL <^1 "-A-.^"'*""
-
'Ii I _-5.
~? ' ~~
Y>t?A -L' iB;s
FIG. 4. The Creationof the Birds (1958). Courtesyof Walter
Gruen.
18 Woman's Art Journal
The religious tone of this cosmic resurrection is
reinforced by the architecture, with its successive ogival
arches capping an intimate chapel-like space. Thus
enshrined, this mandala-like still-life-as-solar-system
offers the ultimate message of hope-that the possibilities
of regeneration are limitless and that out of destruction
can come rebirth, new life, and growth. For a woman who
experienced the devastation of two wars and the
dislocation of two exiles, it is a powerful testament to hope
and to the future. That it was to be her last painting only
makes the irony more bitter and the statement more
profound. ?
1. Author's interview with Carmen Barreda, then director of the Museo de
Arte Moderno, Mexico City, January 8, 1980.
2. WalterGruen,Varo's last husband, did lend a number of Varo paintings
to the Museo de Art Modernoin the 1970s for exhibition on an extended
loan basis. However,he withdrew the pieces in protest after the museum
mounted an exhibition of work by another artist whose style Gruen
considered to be a bad imitation of Varo's.
3. Although born in Spain, Varo is considered a Mexican artist because
the entire body of her mature work was done while she lived in Mexico
from 1942-1963.The beautifully illustrated monograph, Remedios Varo
(Mexico City: ERA Ediciones, 1966, 2nd ed. 1969, 3rd ed. 1972), with
texts by Octavio Paz, Roger Caillois and Juliana Gonzalez, it is now
out-of-printand a collector's item. A new monograph is in preparation
in France, which will have a short text in Spanish and French by
Edouard Jaguer. Varo is included in some Mexican art history texts,
usually in a chapter dealing with the contributions of foreign artists
in Mexico. Her work is discussed more fully in two Mexican tests on
Surrealism: Jan Somolinos Palencia, El Surrealismo en la Pintura
Mexicana (Mexico: Arte Ediciones, 1973); and Ida Rodriguez
Prampolini, El Surrealismo y el Arte Fantastico de Mexico (Mexico:
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Instituto de
Investigaciones Esteticas, 1969). There is also a short film, Remedios
Varo:An Interpretation, made by Jomi Garcia Ascot, producedby Eva
Sulzer, with music by J. GutierrezHeras and photography by M. Jose
Torre, which was presented at the festival of short subjects in
Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1966. This color film is available in 35 mm and
16 mm, distributed in the U.S. by Serious Business Co. of Oakland,
California. The only mention of Varo in English language publications
is a brief reference with illustrations by Karen Petersen and J.J. Wilson
in Women Artists: Recognition and Reappraisal (New York: Harper
and Row, 1976) and by Gloria Orenstein in the article "Women of
Surrealism," Feminist Art Journal (Spring 1973), 1, 15-21, which was
expanded as "Art History and the Case for the Women of Surrealism,"
JGE: The Journal of General Education (Spring 1975),31-54,published
by the Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park. This
article is part of a book-in-progressby the author which will be the first
extensive English-language monograph on Remedios Varo.
4. Author's interview with Juliana Gonzalez, philosopher at the National
University of Mexico, Mexico City, January 16, 1980.
5. Interview with the artist, Raquel Tibol, "Artes Plasticas: Primera
investigacion de Remedios Varo," Novedades (July 28, 1957), "Mexico
en la Cultura," 6.
6. This is taken from a series of descriptions Varo offered for her work,
as remembered by Walter Gruen. Gruen, attributing them to letters
Varo wrote to her brother, Dr. Rodrigo Varo, in Spain, included them as
notes in the "Index of Illustrations" of Remedios Varo. This reference
is from the note to plate #6, 173-74.
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7. For discussion of creation myths which involve the metaphor of
weaving, see Marie-Louisevon Franz, Patterns of Creativity Mirrored
in Creation Myths (Zurich:Spring Publications, 1972), 88-9.
8. Remedios Varo, from note to plate #7, 174.
9. Varo makes this referenceovert by painting here an accurate likeness of
her first husband, GerardoLizarraga. It is one of very few true portraits
in Varo's work.
10. Peret returned to Paris without Varo in 1948.
11. Jill Purce, The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul (New York: Avon
1974), 18.
12. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton:
Bollingen Foundation, 1968), 58.
13. Remedios Varo, from note to plate #12, 174.
14. Ibid., note to plate #66, 177.
15. This image is also a visual reference to Andre Breton's famous prose
work, Les Vases cor municants.
16. The famous quotation, "Beautiful as the chance encounter, on a
dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella," by Isidore
Ducasse under the pseudonym, "Comte de Lautreamont", became a
model for Surrealist metaphor and chance association of images. From
Les Chants de Maldoror (Paris, 1869).
17. Tibol, "Artes Plasticas: Primera investigacion de Remedios Varo," 6.
18. Orenstein, "Women of Surrealism," 15.
19. For discussion of Breton's conception of woman as "Other" see
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, (New York: Knopf, 1968),
236-37.
20. The entire body of Varo's Mexican work numbers approximately 110
paintings, dating from c. 1953-1963.
21. Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination (New York: Avon
1976), 413.
22. From undated, uncited interview with Varo by Luis Islas Garcia, in
collection of Walter Gruen.
23. Varo worked as a decorator of furniture; was a restorer of pre-
Columbian pottery; worked on costumes for Chagall's Mexico City
production of the ballet, Aleko; did drawings for Bayer aspirin
advertisements; worked creating dioramas to illustrate war
developments for English antifascist propaganda; and did drawings of
insects for the Ministry of Public Health in Caracas, Venezuela.
24. Varo's Souvenir of the Walkyrie,a painting of 1938,was first exhibited
in Mexico City in 1940, as part of the International Surrealist
Exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Mexicano, organized by Wolfgang
Paalen and Cesar Moro. This took place before Varo emigrated to
Mexico, and she was included here as part of the French Surrealist
group. The workis characteristic of her derivative style from the French
years.
25. 'According to all written accounts, Varo's death was caused by a totally
unexpected and immediately fatal heart attack. Some friends say she
had heart trouble,aggravated by her chain smoking; others say she had
no history of any cardiac problem. Still others report rumors that the
death was a suicide. The official account of heart attack still stands and
no evidence has been uncovered to support any other explanation for
her death.
JANET KAPLAN, an art historian and artist, is completing her
Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia Universtiy on the life and work of
Remedios Varo. She is Assistant Professor of Art History at Moore
College of Art, Philadelphia, and has taught at Franconia College,
where she organized the New England Conference of Women
Artists, and at the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth.