Remedios Varo – my daily art display

Remedios Varo. Part 5. The productive years.

In 1958, Remedios Varo participated in the First Salon of Women’s Art at the Galerías Excelsior of Mexico, together with Leonora Carrington, Alice Rahon, Bridget Bate Tichenor and other contemporary women painters of her era. Remedios submitted two of her works, Harmony and Be Brief, and won the first prize of 3,000 pesos.

Her painting Harmony is a fascinating work of art. According to Luis-Martín Lozano an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art:

“…Harmony was conceived as a self-portrait, where the author takes on the role of the organizer of the universe, using a sheet music mill to connect with creatures from other dimensions through magical crystals and formulas…”

In the painting, sitting in a medieval study, we see an androgynous figure of a scientist although some believe it to be a self-portrait of the artist. The figure takes objects from a treasure chest such as geometric solids, jewels, plants, crystals, even a scrap of paper with the mathematical constant, pi, written out to six digits.

They are then placed as notes onto a three-dimensional musical staff, which is being used as an arranging tool, and by doing so, creates from a chaos of possibilities, the order that is music. On the wall behind the staff we see a female figure who also adds items to the strings of the musical staff. This is the hand of chance, which is a vital ingredient in attaining scientific achievement.

St Jerome in his Study by Antonello da Messina (c.1460-1475)

The depiction has been likened to the Renaissance painting by Antonello da Messina’s work entitled Saint Jerome in his Study, which he completed around 1475. In both paintings a solitary figure sits in a self-contained space surrounded by thick heavy stone walls, arched doorways and ceilings and a multi-design floor.

The trompe l’oeil technique was used by both artists. Antonella attempts to trick the viewers eye with what looks like a three-dimensional step in the foreground of his painting whilst Varo has presented us with a bird’s nest emerging from a split in the back of the upholstered chair. Varo wants not only us to be fooled by this aspect but she shows that a bird is also deceived! Varo’s painting mirrors the Netherlandish style of paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth century in the way there are so many items within the depiction, each one making you query why it had been inserted. Do the various items have a certain meaning that we should grasp? We should also remember that as a teenager her father would take her to the Prado in Madrid and it was here that she fell in love with the works of Hieronymus Bosch which displayed a myriad of objects, figures and weird details.

Centre panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting *Garden of Earthly Delights* (1490-1510)

Hieronymus Bosch’s famous triptych painting Garden of Earthly Delights which hangs in the Prado could well have been remembered by Remedios when she painted her 1959 work entitled Troubador as both have oversized yet identifiable birds depicted.

Again, in this painting we see a bow being pulled across, not a stringed instrument, but the long strands of hair of a female. In an earlier blog, we saw a painting depicting the bow being drawn across sunbeams.

Another interesting painting by Varo is one entitled The Juggler. At the centre of the depiction we see the magician/juggler standing on a table in front of a crowd of onlookers. The table actually forms part of his bizarre-looking vehicle. The Juggler is dressed in a red robe which covers his brown-patterned outfit and atop his head he wears a witch-like conical hat. The face of the juggler is painted on a five-sided piece of inlaid mother of pearl. Mother of pearl was often associated with works by Remedios Varo. For her, it was the idea of enlightenment and of understanding, a sort of hyper-awareness. The figure is in the act of juggling but instead of using his juggler’s rings which lay at his feet he is juggling balls of light adding to the impression that this is not just an ordinary juggler but one with mystic powers. Look carefully at his audience. All look the same with similar hairstyles and yet on closer inspection they all have individual expressions. However, what is more bizarre are their clothes. Again, on closer inspection their clothes are made from just one single cloak which is worn by them all. It is all about unity. Varo, in a letter, described the audience as:

“… a kind of unenlightened individuals who were awaiting a transference of enlightenment from the magician so that they can wake up…”

The painting does not just depict the juggler and his audience. Look closely at the others in the “cast” that add to the depiction. Varo includes and owl who we see in the part-open chest, a lion that lies obediently at the juggler’s feet and the ever-present birds. Inside the vehicle is the juggler’s wife and a goat. It is this type of painting that I find fascinating. No matter how many times you look at it there is something new to see and it taxes your brain trying to work out what Remedios was thinking when she put brush to masonite. The painting is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The theme of the relationship between mother and child was explored in her 1956 painting, Star Catcher. Remedios never had children although she did terminate a pregnancy when she was married to Péret saying that motherhood was more than she could handle. In this painting we see a huntress has captured the moon and carries it in a cage. The fantastic huntress is adorned in a sumptuous costume with delicately marked butterfly-wing sleeves and holds the butterfly net she has used to capture the crescent moon. The depiction is both beautiful and disturbing and the iconography is hard to read. However, the idea of imprisonment and constraint runs through many of Remedios’ paintings. It is the dichotomy between power (the huntress) and powerlessness (the captured moon) which is another recurring theme in her work.

Breaking the Vicious Circle by Remedios Varo (1962)

The theme of breaking free of constraint and demonstrating female power featured in her 1962 mixed-media painting entitled Breaking the Vicious Circle. The background is a brown shapeless void A female figure stands before us. She summons all of her strength to pull apart the rope that encircles her body. This severing of the rope circle causes an electrification of her hair which stands on end and at the same time we see her torso open up to reveal a path through a forest. It symbolises the opening up of the possibilities inside her. Her subconscious thoughts are revealed which are rich and adventurous. So, what does it all mean? The breaking of the rope circle is a metaphor for the breaking free and release of the figure’s power of imagination. This breaking free from the past and tradition allows the figure to embark on a spiritual journey that had lay dormant in her heart. Look towards the floor at the hem of her cloak. In the folds of her cloak, at her feet, there is an over-sized bird, which according to Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and great thinker who made a deep impression on Varo, this was a symbol of transcendence and so the woman has made a spiritual breakthrough.

L’Ecole Buissonnière by Remedios Varo (1962)

In an earlier blog I talked about how Remedios, as a schoolgirl, was fascinated in the occult. Later in life, she studied mystic disciplines and immersed herself in metaphysical texts and in the pursuit of meaning and control. It became a passion that dominated her work. She became interested in the ideas postulated by the likes of Jung, Helena Blavatsky as well as stories about the legends of the Holy Grail, alchemy and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text. It is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, philosophy, literature, and art which Remedios consulted regularly before she made decisions. She had spurned Catholicism saying:

“…What you grow up with you are given dogmatically, what you find, you conquer yourself…”

It was her search for an alternative to Catholicism featured in the depiction in her 1962 work entitled L’Ecole buissonière (literally, school in the bush but colloquially it means playing hooky). In the painting we see a youth who has skipped school and gone into the forest in search of answers. In the conical tower he finds his “friends” – the cunning fox and the wise owl which holds a crystal ball. These will be his true mentors.

An earlier painting completed in 1956 followed a similar theme of knowledge and learning. In her painting Hermitano (Hermit) we see depicted a magical figure standing alone in the woods. The body of the figure is formed by a misty six-pointed star, formed by joining together upright and inverted triangles, which symbolises equilibrium and the unification of consciousness with the unconsciousness.

If you look closely at the chest cavity of the figure you will detect the circle of yin-yang, the Chinese symbol that similarly represents the balance of opposites. The face of the figure is one of calmness and serenity and suggests inner harmony and balance.

When we look closely at Remedios Varo’s depictions, are we taking in every facet of her work? The American art historian, Whitney Chadwick summed it up saying:

“…Although we often see everything [on them], we can’t help feeling that we’re missing an important key that would clearly show us the meaning…”

Take for example Varo’s 1956 work entitled Three Destinies. What is going on? We see before us three figures in monk-like robes, each sitting in separate towers. One is writing, one is painting whilst the third is drinking. Each are oblivious to the presence of the other two. We also see, faintly drawn, a pully and rope systems connecting the towers. And so, what is happening?

Remedios Varo’s explanation of this depiction is that although the three figures believe they are independent, they are actually and inextricably interconnected. The fate of the three is permanently interwoven by the complicated pully system which winds around each of the three figures which makes them move, albeit they believe they are moving freely and one day in the future their lives will cross. Varo was fascinated by what she believed was just an indistinct line separating free will and determinism, the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes.

Still life Reslicitando by Remedios Varo (1963)

Remedios Varo’s last work was completed in 1963 and was entitled Still Life Reviving. The painting was one of only a few of her works which did not include a human figure. The painting was all about the cyclical rebirth of nature. Before us we see a tablecloth, eight dinner plates, various fruits and a candlestick all of which have been swept into a whirlwind by a source of energy which we cannot see. Soon it looks like a celestial depiction with the fruits acting like planets orbiting the sun, in this case, the candle flame. Look carefully at the fruit on the outermost ring. The colliding fruit explode and this then results in the seeds of the fruit being sent back to earth, the floor, where we see them magically germinate, sprouting roots and bearing small delicate green shoots. Above all this there are the diaphanous blue dragonflies that witness the goings-on and fly off to spread the news. Look at the background. Here we see a religious tone to the work with the ogival arches which sit above a chapel-like space. Varo has energised the work by adding a warm glow which also enhances the work, by her inclusion of the reds, golds and oranges of the fruit.

In 1963 Remedios suffered some health problems. She had complained of a shortage of breath when climbing stairs. She had a history of chronic gastric problems and was known to drink excessive amounts of coffee as well as being a heavy smoker. She was checked out for heart problems but was given a clean bill of health. The state of her mental health was open to doubt. Some of her friends said she was bubbly and full of life whist others said she had told them that she was depressed and did not know whether she could carry on with life. Walter Gruen, her husband, remembered the devastating afternoon of October 8^th 1963, saying that he and Remedios had lunched with their friend Roger Cossio who had come to buy Varo’s painting, The Lovers. Gruen said his wife was happily explaining the details of the work to the buyer. With lunch over Cossio left and Gruen returned to his Sala Margolin shop across from their house to do some work. Shortly after, their Indian maid rushed into Gruen’s shop to tell him that Remedios was very ill. Gruen rushed home to find his wife complaining of chest pains. Gruen was unable to contact a doctor so left Remedios and went into the next room to consult some medical books. When he returned to his wife, he found that she had died.

Remedios Varo died two months shy of her fifty-fifth birthday. She was buried at the Jardin Panteon, a cemetery on the outskirts of the city. The local newspapers were full of the story of her life and her untimely death. Margarita Nelken, a close friend and a journalist for the Mexico city newspaper Excelsior wrote:

“…Remedios Varo, one of the greatest artists of modern Mexico, and – without exaggeration – of contemporary painting, on Tuesday evening left us forever. Unexpectedly. So discreetly, quietly, just as she had lived among us…”

Alfonso de Neuvillate, the art critic for the Novedades newspaper wrote:

“…Unjust, inexplicable…..on Tuesday, the eighth of October at 7pm, death ended the life of one of the most individual and extraordinary painters of Mexican art, Remedios Varo. A heart attack. One asks the questions like, why her? Why not someone mediocre?…”

Most of the information for this blog, apart from the usual sources, comes from Janet A. Kaplan’s excellent book entitled Remedios Varo, Unexpected Journeys. This is a must-read book if you want a fuller version of the life and times of Remedios Varo.

Remedios Varo. Part 4 – A new life in Mexico

Varo arrived in Mexico at the end of 1941 having had to flee the oppression of Vichy France and the Nazis. She had been accepted by the Mexican government and granted the status of a political exile for one year but which could be renewed. She was allowed to find work with the exception of bars, cabarets and restaurants providing she did not displace any Mexican workers. It is estimated that Mexico accepted more than fifteen thousand refugees into its country. The majority of them could be termed the “intelligentsia”, who brought with them a much-needed stimulus to both the economic and cultural development of the country. Many of these exiles believed that one day in the near future they would be able to return to France and Spain and so many of these exiles kept together rather than try to assimilate with Mexicans and their culture.

These exiled artist from Europe were not loved by everybody and the most popular Mexican artist of the time, Diego Rivera and his partner Freda Kahlo. who held the position of being the reigning leaders of Mexican artistic culture rejected what they deemed as the foreign colonializing influences of the newly arrived European artists. Kahlo who had been in Paris in 1939 for her own exhibition at the Pierre Colle gallery and who had been a guest of André Breton was surprisingly scathing about the Surrealist painters. In a letter from Kahlo to Nikolas Murray, a Hungarian-born American photographer and her long-time lover, in the March of that year, she wrote:

“…They make me vomit. They are so damn ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore……I’d rather sit on the floor in the market at Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris…”

One of Remedios’ closest friends when she arrived in Mexico was the English Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who like Remedios had to flee from the Vichy and Nazi controlled France and find refuge in Mexico. Leonora and Remedios, who had first met in France in the late 1930’s, got together nearly every day and the two women formed an intense connection and would talk about their dreams for the future.

In her early days in Mexico, Remedios did few paintings and spent most of her time writing. She and Leonora Carrington would write fairy tales, collaborated on a play, invented Surrealistic potions and recipes, and influenced each other’s work. The two women, together with another of their friends, the photographer Kati Horna became known as “the three witches”

Once in Mexico, Varo took on a variety of jobs, hand painting furniture and restoring pre-Columbian artifacts. In 1942, she worked with Marc Chagall, a fellow refugee from Air-Bel in Marseilles, designing costumes for Leon Massine’s ballet, Aleko. Remedios completed a painting in 1957 entitled Women’s Tailor which shows the wild imagination she had when it came to costume designs. The setting is a showroom in an haute-couture fashion house and we see the dress designer proudly parading his models wearing his dresses in front of a potential client. She had always loved designing and making clothes and would often design clothes for many of the exiled Surrealist costume parties.

Remedios Varo’s main source of income in the late 1940’s was the work she did for Casa Bayer (the Bayer pharmaceutical company). She was tasked with illustrating their promotional literature. One example of this was her work, Insomnia, which was incorporated into a pamphlet advertising Bayer’s sleeping pills, which included the words warning of the trauma of insomnia:

“…Sensing that someone has been observing them, they open tired eyelids, searching the nocturnal shadows ! Undefined anxiety fills the solitude of the dark, dry rooms, devoid of warmth…”

Rheumatism Lumbago Sciatica by Remedios Varo (1947)

Another pamphlet Remedios illustrated was one focusing on back pain which Bayer pharmaceuticals could alleviate. The horrors of the ailment were summed up by Bayer in their leaflet:

“…As if sharp nails are being driven into flesh…..into the joints, into the bones, into the nerves…..!!! These are the sensations that one can suffer, Rheumatism….lumbago….sciatica….! !…”

Remedios Varo’s illustration for the 1947 Bayer pamphlet entitled Rheumatism, lumbago, sciatica, added greater force to the words. In the work we see a man depicted running through a boulder-strewn field with pointed objects piercing his feet and body. In the background there is a castle with conical towers and crenelated walls which harks back to the Spanish castles of Varo’s childhood.

It is also believed that Varo drew inspiration for this depiction of spikes and nails entering the man’s body from Freda Kahlo’s 1944 work Broken Column which she painted as a reminder of how her body had been broken and put together again after she was involved in traffic accident whilst riding on an old wooden bus, which collided with a streetcar. Several people were killed, and Kahlo suffered nearly fatal injuries—an iron handrail impaled her through her pelvis, fracturing the bone. She also fractured several ribs, her legs, and her collarbone which was to leave her in pain for the rest of her life.

Allegory of Winter by Remedios Varo (1948)

She also illustrated the Bayer calendar with depictions of the coming of Winter and the coming of Spring.

It is interesting to note that all the commercial illustrations she did for Bayer and other companies were signed “Uranga”, her mother’s maiden name. Varo was determined to clearly separate her commercial work from her own art which she was happy to sign in her own name.

Although Remedios was beginning to enjoy life in Mexico, her second husband Benjamin Péret was homesick for France and wanted to return there with Varo but his financial situation would not allow him to purchase a passage on a ship to France. He wrote to his old friend André Breton, who had been exiled in America and the Caribbean until 1946, when he had managed to return to Paris. Péret’s letters to Breton were sad and pleading. In March 1947 he wrote:

“…It’s true I have not written for a long time, but what’s the use of writing to give always discouraging news: abominable material circumstances, no hope of prompt return…”

In October 1947 he wrote again to Breton telling of his poor financial situation:

“…I still can’t make any arrangements for return, for lack of money. As soon as this is possible, I’ll let you know…”

Breton and other friends of Péret finally rallied around and staged an exhibition for him at the Paris Galerie Rive Gauche. Artists, such as Picasso, Miro, Tanguy, Dominguez and Breton contributed works, the sale of which was enough to pay for a single one-way passage and by late 1947 Péret was ensconced once again in his beloved Paris. Remedios Varo refused to accompany her husband for she had made her home in Mexico and did not or could not return to her homeland which held so many bad memories for her. Her relationship with Péret had been going downhill for some time. Varo’s close friend, Kati Horna, a Hungarian photographer, explained why Remedios’ relationship with Péret had run its course:

“…Péret was so intellectual, so distracted, that although he was a kind and generous man, he did not participate actively. He was always lost in thought, his head in the clouds, thinking weighty thoughts…”

Portrait of Jean Nicole by Remedios Varo

Varo had already started a new relationship before her husband had taken his leave of Mexico. The new love of her life was a French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicholl, a fellow refugee whom Péret and Varo had sheltered

Remedios Varo with Jean Nicole in the jungle, Venezuela – 1949

To get over the break with her husband, Remedios travelled with her new friend/lover Jean Nicolle to Venezuela at the end of 1947. Her brother Rodrigo was living in Venezuela, working as an epidemiologist and had brought with him his family and his mother. It is quite possible Remedios’ mother was horrified when she met her daughter and her new flamboyant lover who was fourteen years younger than her, and who were now living together. Her mother’s Catholic sensibility must have taken a big hit, knowing her daughter’s first marriage had ended in divorce, her second partner had left her and gone back to Paris and now she was living with a third man! Her answer was a plea for her daughter to attend mass with her. Remedios did accompany her mother to church – but just the once. Remedios’ stay in Venezuela came to an end at the start of 1949.

Around the time of their return from Venezuela, Remedios and Jean Nicolle’s relationship began to peter out and soon they became separated and eventually their romantic interlude came to an end. A new man came in to Remedios’ life, an Austrian political refugee Walter Gruen whom she had first met in the early 1940’s. However, they did not become closer until Péret had left for Paris in 1947, her relationship with Jean Nicolle had been downgraded to just a friendship and Gruen’s first wife, Clari had died in a tragic drowning accident.

Gruen had once been a medical student in Austria until Hitler came to power which put and end to his studies. He decided that his life was in danger and managed to escape Europe and settle in Mexico. He arrived with no possessions and very little money. Initially he worked in a tyre shop and persuaded the owner that he could make extra money by selling phonograph records as well as tyres and Gruen and the owner set up a record shop at the front of the store. Soon Gruen’s finances improved, so much so, he bought the tyre shop owner out and by the early 1950’s Gruen had transformed the tyre store into one of Mexico’s most prestigious music stores. Gruen named his store Sala Margolín after the tyre store owner who had given him his first chance in Mexico. Remedios moved in with Gruen in 1951 and lived in an apartment block on calle Alvaro Obregón close to Sala Margolín in a middle-class neighbourhood.

They occupied two apartments on either side of a landing, one of which had a high-ceiling third floor studio which had a door leading out to a small terrace, where Remedios would spend hours on end painting. Walter and Remedios married in 1952. Remedios was adamant that despite Gruen having a lucrative business she would contribute equally to their living expenses. Gruen gave Remedios his unwavering support which allowed her to free herself from her commercial work and devote herself entirely to her own artistic vision.

This was the start of Remedios Varo’s great painting years.

………..to be concluded

Remedios Varo. Part 3. Escape and flight from oppression.

Remedios Varo’s six year old marriage to Gerado Lizarraga was in decline and she started a romantic relationship with the young Spanish surrealist painter Esteban Francés, and a short time later, she left the marital home and she and Esteban went to live together in a room in a small house in the city. Whilst there, the two lovers produced a number of surrealist works. Remedios also became friendly with a group of surrealist artists known as the Logicophobists, who wanted to bring about a close connection of art with metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, and although she never became an official member of the group in 1936 she exhibited three of her work with theirs at the Catalonia de Barcelona gallery.

The Spanish Civil War broke out on July 17th 1936 between two political groups. The Republicans who supported the Second Republic of Spain which had been founded in 1932 following a bloodless coup and the Nationalists, led by General Franco, who opposed it. Remedios’ young brother, Luis, joined Franco’s army but was killed shortly afterwards. Remedios was devastated by the death of her brother and could never understand why he decided to fight under the banner of the “enemy”.

In October 1936, Remedios Varo met Benjamin Péret, a French poet, a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement. Péret had married the Brazilian singer Elsie Houston in April 1928. Her brother was Mario Pedrosa, a Trotskyist activist, and the next year, Péret and his brother-in-law founded and hosted the Communist League of Brazil, which was based upon the ideas of Trotsky. Péret was eventually arrested, imprisoned and expelled from Brazil as a “communist agitator” on December 30th, 1931, a few months after the birth of his son Geyser. He returned alone to France and carried on with the political struggle as a Trotskyist and participated in the Spanish Civil War as one of the many Trotskyists and anarchists, who claimed to fight for a classless society. When Remedios and Péret first met she was twenty-seven and he was thirty-seven.

Péret was a close friend of the Surrealist painter, André Breton. In 1937, Péret returned to Paris and Remedios went with him, breaking off her ties with her husband Gerardo and her lover, Esteban Frances, but the latter later decided to follow the couple to Paris. Remedios and Péret were now lovers but the couple’s life was marked by poverty and political uncertainty. She described the position she found herself in the French capital:

“…It is not easy to live on painting in Paris…Sometimes I did not have more food in an entire day than a small cup of coffee with milk. I call this ‘the heroic epoch’…That bohemian life that is supposed to be necessary for the artist is very bitter…”

It is Spring 1937 and Remedios Varo and Benjamin Péret are safe in Paris having escaped the mayhem in Spain caused by the Civil War. Remedios, through her close relationship with Péret, was accepted into the heart of the Surrealist group. She commented on her lowly position within the inner sanctum:

“…My position was the timid and humble one of a listener; I was not old enough nor did I have the aplomb to face up to them, to a Paul Eluard, a Benjamin Péret or an André Breton. Here was I with my mouth gaping open within this group of brilliant and gifted people…”

The Souls of the Mountains by Remedios Varo (1938)

Whilst living in Paris she shared a Montparnasse studio with Péret and Francés and although this ménage-a-trois caused rivalries Remedios managed to enjoy life in Paris. In 1938 she completed a painting entitled The Souls of the Mountains. In this work, mountains are portrayed as slim volcanic tubes which are seen rising from a light-impregnated mist. Out from the inside of the tallest pair of these mountains emerge a head of a woman each bearing a resemblance to the artist. Remedios experimented not just with what she depicted but also how she depicted things. In this work she has used a Surrealist technique known as fumage. The technique of fumage was invented by the Austrian surrealist artist Wolfgang Paalen in the late 1930s and is achieved by passing a flame quickly across a surface fresh with oil paint. Paalen found that the smoke would trace unique marks in the wet surface. In this work by Varo the fumage technique created clouds swirling around the cylindrical mountains, linking the stony peaks and is suggestive of dreams and apparitions.

Again, we try and get into the head of the artist and work out what the painting is all about. The encased females in the painting appear to be imprisoned all alone inside the mountain. Remedios continually harked back to the past and on her feeling of imprisonment within the family home, the constraints made upon her at her convent school and the feeling of isolation and this depiction reminds us of her struggle to break free. The mountains have a phallic shape and this could be Remedios’ take that she lives in a male-dominated world and that female artists of the time were not looked upon as real painters but were compartmentalised as being the “spouses of artists”. The overall dark and depressing palette of the depiction was chosen by Remedios so as to give the work a feeling of isolation and disheartening confinement. The title of the work gives us a clue that the depiction is about a life force under oppression which is deprived of its freedom and entitlement to be acknowledged. Remedios believes that the souls in the painting should be released from their incarceration so that they may be able to express themselves fully and without any restrictions from their surroundings. Likewise, Remedios believes female artists should be freed from the restrictions of a patriarchal society.

Left to right: Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret, Remedios Varo and André Breton in front of the Villa Air-Bel (c.1940-41)

So, what was life like for Remedios Varo and her Surrealist group ? Maybe the late American art historian, Robert Goldwater summed it up in his publication, Reflections on the New York School, Quadrum 8. He wrote about the group:

“…international in character, bohemian in a self-confident, intensive fashion….. living as if they had no money worries….[Yet they] existed on the margin of society……As thee latest issue of a long line of romantics, they accepted this situation as a condition of creativity and made it a positive virtue. They carried with them a warmth of feeling, an intensity and concern for matters aesthetic, a conviction of the rightness of their own judgements and an unconcern for any other…”

This encapsulates Remedios Varo’s lifestyle at the time. She believed fervently in the importance of art and she was reliant on spontanaity and put her trust in her subconscious instincts. At the time, Péret was working as a proof-reader as the sale of his paintings did not bring in enough money to survive and he would often have to beg for food. When Remedios joined him, she too had to endure this lifestyle but she didn’t care as she loved this bohemian way of life and revelled in the company of the extraordinary and stimulating group of people with whom she was surrounded. They too were mesmerised by her and during this time she had a number of love affairs. However, her joie de vie was to be short lived as politics and war were to change her life once again. Hitler was on his march towards European domination and with his annexation of the Sudetenland and the takeover of Austria, people in France feared the worst. By July 1939, the worst had arrived and Parisians were told that if they were able, they should get out of their city which was now paralysed with anxiety. It was an even more dangerous time for foreigners who lived in the French capital. They were threatened with deportation back to their own countries. Remedios, being a former Republican sympathiser, could not return to Spain where the right-wing Nationalists under Franco now ruled with an iron fist and where summary executions of Republican sympathizers were common. Her former husband, Lizarraga, had fled from Franco’s armies and arrived in France but, as a Spanish refugee, he found himself interred in a French concentration camp.

In February 1940, Péret, being an outspoken Communist, was recalled to military service but three months later he had been incarcerated in a military prison in Rennes for his political activities. On June 14^th 1940 the Nazis entered Paris. An independent French government was established in Vichy and the Franco-German armistice was signed. Included in the treaty was an article which required the Vichy French government to surrender on demand any fugitive wanted by the Third Reich. Remedios was now in great danger for her connections with Péret. She knew that because of her left-wing Republican views and past actions, she would not survive if she was deported to Spain and yet to remain in Paris would ultimately mean a journey to an internment camp. Her friends tried everything to save Remedios from arrest but during the Winter of 1940 she was taken in by the police. She was eventually released but she knew, despite wanting to stay behind until Péret was released, she had to get out of the French capital.

She did manage to escape the chaos in June 1940 and through help from her friend, Oscar Dominguez. She managed to get a ride in a car owned by an American couple who were also escaping from Paris. She arrived on the south coast at the small fishing village of Canet-Plage which lay close to Perpignan. It was here she stayed with a number of Surrealist painters who had taken refuge on the Mediterranean coast. Soon she and a Romanian Jew, Victor Brauner, who had also fled south, paired off and went to live together in Marseilles. This was yet another of her love affairs. As a reminder of their time together he gave her a watercolour, probably a portrait of her, and he wrote on it:

“…To my very dear friend Remedios with the memory of an indelible period of my life. Your admiring friend, Victor Brauner, Marseille, Oct 1941…”

Remedios kept Brauner’s watercolour and a letter from him all her life.

Varo and Brauner were now part of a large group of intellectuals, artists and Jews who were trying to escape the Nazis. They were joined by Péret at the end of the year. He had managed to bribe the Nazi guards and then made a long and dangerous journey south. The city of Marseilles was bursting with refugees all desperate to get out of the country. They were living on little food and the fear of being caught in random but regular police roundups.

Varo and Péret eventually found refuge at the Villa Air-Bel, a large residence outside the city which was being used by a group calling themselves the Emergency Rescue Committee. This was a group that officially helped refugees legally obtain visas so they could leave France. The group’s secret agenda was to get those people on the Gestapo’s blacklist – specifically writers, artists and political activists, out of the country, by any means possible, The organisation was led by an American, Varian Fry. Fry was one of the founding members and as soon as the Committee was set up, they established a list of people to save in priority, mainly artists and writers, who had fled Germany and Occupied France to hide in the South.

Group of artists posing on the grounds of the Villa Air-Bel near Marseilles (1941)

Remedios Varo, now back with Péret, was in great danger. Many of their fellow refugees had gained passage to America but Péret had been refused entry to America due to his previous communist activities. As each month passed in Marseilles the danger of being arrested by the Vichy police became ever greater. They knew they had to escape. Their perilous situation was documented in notes in the files of the Emergency Rescue Committee:

“…He [Péret] is in immediate danger as his democratic ideas are opposed to the Vichy government, and he faces persecution. He and his family [referring to Varo, although Péret did not marry Remedios Varo until 1942, after the death of his first wife] are in danger of starvation, as the problem of the food supply in their region is acute…”

Remedios Varo’s immigration papers (1942)

The Emergency Rescue Committee recognised the couple as “qualified as intellectuals and worthy of attention” and proceeded to try and attain visa for them so as they could leave France. It was a long and torturous fight to get the documentation and took six months to achieve. However, it was not just the visas they needed but money, again something they did not have. Once again it was up to the Emergency Rescue Committee to get them financial help from their American backers. Their fund-raising pamphlets were quite clear with their message which displayed hard-hitting headlines such as:

“…Wanted by the GESTAPO, Saved by America…”

The pamphlet then asked for contributions of $350, as the price of a life of one escapee.

Remedios and Péret’s thoughts then turned to Mexico as a place of refuge. They had a number of things going for them with this idea. Varo spoke Spanish. The President of Mexico had stated that he would accept all Spanish refugees and to any members of the International Brigade living in France, who had once fought against Franco. So, the destination for Péret and Varo was decided, now all they needed was to get there and procure a safe sea passage across the Atlantic. For this to happen they had to travel from Marseilles to Casablanca and then board a ship to Mexico. They eventually made it to Casablanca and on November 20^th 1941, a year after they had arrived in Marseilles, they set sail from Casablanca on the Portuguese freighter Serpa Pinto. The couple arrived in Mexico at the end of 1941. They had been battered by the ferocious winter seas of the Atlantic Ocean crossing and also fearful of being attacked by Nazi naval ships. Remedios remembered the ordeal in a later interview, she said:

“…I came to Mexico searching for the peace that I had not found, neither in Spain – that of the revolution – nor in Europe – that of the terrible war – for me it was impossible to paint amidst such anguish…”

…………..to be continued

Remedios Varo: Part 2. Lovers and war.

Whilst attending the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid Remedios met Gerrado Lizarraga, a fellow student. He was a Basque from Pamplona, a lanky, long-nosed man, known for his honesty and great sense of humour. During the time at the Academia she remained living at home and it was during her years at the Academia that she realised she had to break free of the family. She desperately wanted her independence. As an unmarried twenty-one-year old woman she was expected to live at home with her family and remain under their tight control. She realised that marriage was the only way out of this restrictive situation.

This constant battle against a restrictive lifestyle whether it be life at the convent school or life at home whilst attending the Academia must have played on Remedios’ mind for many years. In 1955 whilst living in Mexico she completed a painting entitled Ruptura (Rupture) which recalled life in “captivity” and the escape. In this work we see her character in a similar situation that reminded her of her own experience whilst in Madrid. Before us we see a hooded figure in a brown travelling cloak leaving a building, from which dead leaves and old papers flutter away in the breeze. Look at the faces in the windows, all staring out at the departing figure. For Remedios, this was what life was like in her teenage years. – constantly being watched over and spied upon. She would later write about how she would hide her diaries under a loose stone on the floor of her bedroom and how she had sprinkled sugar on the floor by her door to see if anybody had entered her room while she was absent. The figure in the painting is going down a long flight of steps. The setting is a winter’s day, the trees having shed their leaves. On either side of the steps are high stone walls which are covered in vegetation. These imposing walls suggest constraint and incarceration, the very feelings which Remedios had during her late teenage years Climbing up the walls we can see a number of snails carrying their large shells, their “homes”, on their backs and is a memory of the burdens Remedios had to carry through her early years. Although there would have been parental control and the convent school would have kept an eye on what she was doing, much of Remedios’ perceived spying would be just a figment of her imagination.

I took advantage of all that I learned, in painting the things that interested me on my own, which could be called, together with technique, the beginning of a personality.”

Gerardo Lizarraga and Remedios Varo (1930)

The year she left the Academia, 1930, was also the year she married her boyfriend and fellow student and political activist Gerardo Lizárraga. They got married in the Basque city of San Sebastian, a place she knew well from her family summer holidays. He was three years older than Remedios and was a politically committed artist and his bohemian and carefree lifestyle appealed to Remedios. For Remedios, marriage enabled her to escape the overwhelming control of her parents, especially her mother. She was fascinated by Surrealism and the surrealist ideas which were beginning to permeate Spanish art from France, especially Paris. She wanted to fully immerse herself into the world of Surrealism and so in 1931 she and Lizárraga moved to Paris. Remedios wanted to experience art tuition other than that pedalled by the Academia de San Fernando and signed up for courses at the Accademia de la Grande Chaumiere, a free art school which was legendary throughout Paris. However, she only lasted there a few three weeks. She felt overwhelmed and under too much pressure and decided that life for her and her husband in Paris should simply be an opportunity to immerse themselves in what Remedios later recalled was a poor bohemian lifestyle, one which allowed them to remain self-assured and untroubled by life. It was a chance to savour an unrestricted life free from her parents.

Like her early departure from the teaching at the Accademia de la Grande Chaumiere, she decided that after a year in the French capital it was time to return to Spain. In 1932 Remedios and her husband went back, not to Madrid, but to Barcelona which had a much more unconventional and innovative feel to it. Barcelona was the closest to Paris in its avant-garde atmosphere. It had become the intellectual and artistic centre of Spain and of course it gave a sufficient distancing from her parents.

Another man entered Remedios’s life soon after she and her husband arrived in Barcelona. He was the Catalan artist Esteban (Esteve) Francés who was born in Portbou, a small town close to the French border. Later he and his family went to live inland to the larger town of Figueras, in North Eastern Spain, also the birthplace of Dali. In 1925, at the age of twelve, he moved to Barcelona where, after a brief period studying law, he enrolled at the art and design school, Escola de la Llotja. He was nineteen when he first met Remedios Varo, and later they shared a studio in Barcelona in the Plaza de Lesseps.

Composición surrealista by Esteban Frances (1934)

He, like Varo, had a great interest in the avant-garde world of Surrealism. Although Remedios lived with her husband, she and Esteban became lovers. This affair marked the first time Remedios had broken the stern moral code under which she had been raised. It was to be first of many open relationships she maintained throughout her life. Being a member of the bohemian set, Varo flouted conventional morals and had few recriminations.

Remedios Varo completed one of her earliest surrealist compositions in 1935 with her pencil on paper artwork, simply entitled Composition. It is a strange depiction of a bone-like tree, a flaccid stretched-out figure and insect/human hybrids all of which flow like a dream one into the next.

L´Agent Double (Double Agent) by Remedios Varo (1936)

Remedios had fully engaged herself in the Surrealist movement and had joined the group known as Logicofobista, whose aim was to epitomise the mental state of the internal soul in a Surrealist style. It was during her time spent as a member of this group that Remedios Varo produced her painting L´Agent Double (Double Agent). Trouble had been brewing in Spain since the early 1930’s which, in 1936 culminated in an almost three-year very bloody civil war. In 1936 Remedios Varo completed this work which reflected the political tensions in Spain at that time. The setting is a small enclosed room which has a separate image on each of the walls and the floor. The back wall is covered with full fleshy female breasts and a small bushy tree, suggesting a hairy pubic triangle. To the right, coming through the window an elongated red arm holding a ball-like object, from which a sperm-like tail is attached which wriggles away into a small dark opening low down on the far wall. On the opposite wall we see a large-handed figure, part heavy-limbed male, part curvaceous female standing up, nose pressed hard against the surface of the wall. It seems to be trapped within the confines of the room. Climbing up the back of this figure is a giant bumblebee. Looking at the floor we see a woman’s head rising out of a crack in the floor surface. It is the first self-portrait of Varo to appear in one of her paintings. Many more would follow over the years. She cautiously looks out and on either side of her head we see vapour or roots rising. This part of the painting is also a reminder that as a child and a teenager Remedios used to hide things, such as her writings and diary, from her family under a stone, part of the floor in her bedroom.

It is easy to describe what we see before us but a little more difficult to make sense of what we see. The year 1936 was the start of the Spanish Civil War, a war which was to see about 200,000 people die as the result of systematic killings, mob violence, torture, or other brutalities. Fighting and killings however, had preceded that date in the struggles between the left-wing sympathisers of the Republican Government also known as the Loyalists who supported the Spanish government and the right-wing Nationalists led by General Franco. Spies and secret agents for both sides were ever present. In the painting entitled Double Agent we are posed the question as to who the double agent is. Is it the figure appearing from out of the floor and who has the perfect vantage point to see what is going on. Has she trapped the part man, part woman? Or is it the figure with its nose pressed to the wall that has trapped her. Or are they both trapped by the creature with the long far-reaching hand? It is all about entrapment and of the fear of treachery and double agents at a time in Spain when one did not know who your ally was and who was your enemy. It was a painting which juxtaposes eroticism with distorted unreal and unrelated objects. Welcome to Surrealism !

Enter the life of Remedios Varo of a man who was to play an important part of her life. He was Benjamin Péret, a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement and a close friend of André Breton. Péret had met Varo in October 1936, through her friendship with Oscar Dominguez, an artist from the Spanish Canary Islands who had close connections with Gaceta de arte, a Tenerife journal devoted to all Surrealist activities. Péret had come to Spain in 1936, a month before the civil war had begun, along with many other left-wing foreigners who wanted to fight for the Republicans against Franco’s Nationalists. He was a Communist activist and had been jailed in Brazil for his subversive activities. Soon a love affair between Varo and Péret began. Péret was nine years older than Varo but was in love with her. In a letter, dated October 15^th 1936 to André Breton, the French writer and poet, who was concerned for the safety of his friend in Barcelona and wondered when he would return to the safety of France. Péret repiled in a letter:

“…I am involved in a love story that holds me here until the young person can accompany me to Paris, so I can say nothing of my return…”

Péret wrote love notes in his books which he gave to Remedios. He was absolutely besotted with her and in his book of love poems, Je sublime, there was a dedication “to Remedios Lizarraga” and part of one of the poems, Source, Péret wrote:

“… It’s Rosa weather with a real Rosa sun

And I’m going to drink Rosa with a Rosa meal

Until I fall into a Rosa sleep

Dressed in Rosa dreams

And the Rosa dawn will wake me like a Rosa

Mushroom

In which Rosa’s image will be surrounded

By a Rosa halo…”

Remedios was equally in love with Péret. So what was the thing that forged this love affair between the two ? For Varo it was probably the fact that Péret was a published poet, a French Surrealist and a close friend of Breton. He was a romantic who had dedicated poems to her. He had left France to fight as a revolutionary defending her country. For Péret she was an attractive younger woman who doted on him. What more could he ask for ? Péret moved back to Paris in early 1937 and in the Spring of that year, Remedios Varo decided to join him, leaving her homeland, her husband and also her one-time lover Estéban Francés, who would later follow her to Paris.

Eyes on the table, by Remedios Varo (1938)

Remedios Varo had escaped the chaos and blood-letting of the Spanish Civil War which had taken the life of her younger brother and moved to the safety of the French capital. However, unknown to her at the time, Paris and France was to be almost the death of her………….

………………………….to be continued.

Remedios Varo. Part 1: Surrealism, the early days, family life and schooling.

We all have our favourite art genre and within that genre we also probably have our favourite artists. For me, I like the Golden Age painters of The Netherlands and the Scandinavian artists who were known as the Skagen painters. For some people narrative paintings are their favourites for others they prefer paintings that have various symbols depicted, each conveying a hidden meaning. Today I am going to look at an artist who is famous for her painting genre, a genre which is both equally strange and yet somewhat fascinating. Let me introduce you to the Spanish surrealist painter Remedios Varo who was born María de los Remedios Varo y Uranga.

André Breton (photo by Henri Manuel) 1927

Before I look at the life and works of Varo, first let us try to understand Surrealism. Surrealism was founded in Paris by the French writer and poet André Breton in 1924. Breton had been a leading light in the Dadaist movement, an artistic movement which was practiced by a group of European writers, artists, and intellectuals in protest against what they saw as a senseless war, World War I, which had claimed an estimated 37.5 million lives. Out of Dadaism was born Surrealism, which was an artistic and literary movement. The Surrealists wanted to put an end to the overbearing dictates of modern society by destroying its mainstay, that of rational thought. Surrealism was preoccupied with spiritualism, the thoughts of Sigmund Freud with regards psychoanalysis and the political thoughts surrounding Marxism. Surrealists wanted to achieve the creation of art which came from the artist’s unconscious mind and that lacked any reasoned thoughts. Surrealism was a forerunner of Automatism which is the avoidance of conscious intention in producing works of art, especially by using mechanical techniques or subconscious associations. Breton maintained that Surrealism was pure psychic automatism.

Varo family
Back: Remedios and older brother Rodrigo Jnr
Front: Mother, paternal grandmother, younger brother Luis and father

In a series of blogs, I will be looking at the life and work of Remedios Varo. María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was born on December 16^th 1908 in the small walled village of Anglès which lies ten kilometres west of Girona and eighty kilometres north-east of Barcelona. The village is situated in a Pyrenees valley close to the River Ter. Remedios was the daughter of Rodrigo Varo-i-Zayalvo who hailed from Cordoba in Andalucía and his wife Ignasia Uranga Bergareche, a large woman of strong character, who came from a Basque family but was actually born in Argentina. Remedios was the middle child of three, having an older brother Rodrigo Jnr., who would later become a doctor and a younger brother, Luis, who would sadly die in the Spanish Civil War. Her mother gave her daughter the name Remedios in dedication to La Virgen de los Remedios as a remedy to help her forget the sadness associated with the death of her older daughter who died when she was very young. Remedios’ connection with her two brothers was very different. Probably because her older brother, Rodrigo, looked in horror at her life as a bohemian artist, their relationship was not a close one. On the other hand, Remedios was very close to her younger brother Luis.

Remedios’ father was a hydraulic engineer and it was his work on the nearby canal and lock systems which had brought the family to Anglès. In his line of work, he had to travel all around the country as well as to North Africa. His wife did not want to be left at home during her husband’s frequent business trips so she and the children would travel with him. The constant “wanderings” of the family and the disruption it caused had an overpowering effect on Remedios. She missed her home, and so, as she should did not want to forget her home life in Anglès, all her life, no matter where she went, she always kept with her a childhood postcard of the street in Anglès where she lived.

Father, older brother and Remedios (1912)

Remedios Varo’s religious upbringing was a tale of two parental beliefs. Her mother, Ignasia, was a devout Catholic whereas her father, Rodrigo, was more receptive to religious beliefs of different faiths. Remedios was very close to her mother but did not believe in her narrow Catholic beliefs favouring her father’s more varied and less dogmatic religious viewpoint. Varo’s father wanted his daughter to attend a “free” school which was independent from both the State and the Church and which many believed gave a more rounded education and were educationally superior to Catholic schools, but her mother demanded Remedios attended a Catholic school. Her mother’s will must have been acceded to as Remedios attended a Roman Catholic convent school run by nuns. A strict belief in Catholicism was demanded of the pupils and to counter this Remedios would immerse herself in books by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas, which spun stories of fantasy worlds. She also liked to read about mysticism and alchemy. It was the strict regimented existence at the Catholic convent school which led, in 1931, to her painting the triptych in which she ridiculed the restraints of convent schooling.

Toward the Tower by Remedios Varo (1961)

The three paintings formed the autobiographical triptych entitled Embroidering Earth’s Mantle. The first of the three works was entitled Towards the Tower and Varo depicts a pack of identical girls following their leader in a trance-like state, bicycling away from a beehive tower in which they were once held captive. All the girls face the same way, except one, Varo’s inclusion of herself as the heroine. She depicts herself as the independently minded rebellious one. Leading the pack of schoolgirls is the Mother Superior and a strange looking man who has a sack over his shoulder from which we see flocks of blue-coloured birds escaping and hovering over the party of cyclists. Look at the bicycles. They are fabricated, in part, from the stiffened fabrics of their own clothes.

Embroidering Earth’s Mantle by Remedios Varo (1961)

In the central panel of the triptych, Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle, we observe the same young women. This time the setting is a room in the tower where the convent girls are made to work. The setting is what could be termed a medieval scriptorium, a room devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes. It is a cramped and isolated space in which the young women are weaving out the surface of the earth under the intense supervision from the Great Master who reads from the book of instructions whilst at the same time, stirring a boiling broth in the same alchemical vessel from which the women draw their embroidery thread. Behind him a veiled figure sits playing a flute. Each and every young woman works alone embroidering images of the landscape onto a continuous fabric which tumbles 0ut from table-height battlements around the sides of the tower. This act of embroidering and needlework was considered to be a skill suitable for cultured young women

Varo has added an ironic twist to the painting although it may not be very clear in the main picture. Remedios’ rebellious heroine in this triptych has embroidered an upside-down image of her and her lover within the folds of the cloth that emerge from her table.

In the final panel, Varo reveals The Escape; Varo’s heroine has successfully fled with her lover on a fantastical furry inverted umbrella which floats on a foggy mist. Both the clothes of the girl and her lover billow behind them in the wind and act as sails. For Varo the triptych is all about imprisonment and the chance to liberate herself from the strict academic confines of convent school life and her determination to free herself from the facelessness of being one among a homogenous many. It was her determination to escape isolation and be free. Her freedom was to come in 1930 when she was twenty-one and left home after marrying Gerrado Lizaraga a fellow art student.

Portrait of Grandmother Doña Josefa Zejalvo by Remedios Varo (1926)

In order to keep his daughter, Remedios, amused on his business trips he would allow her to redraw his blueprints, and at the same time explain the function of the various systems. Remedios’s knowledge grew as did her inquisitiveness. This was the start of her artistic tuition. Her father was a hard taskmaster and would make his daughter repeat technical drawings until they were right. Over time her draughtsmanship constantly improved and her pencil lines gradually became more accurate as she became self-assured. This infused in her the lifelong characteristic of meticulousness. She had started to become a perfectionist. Besides his training of Remedios in draughtsmanship, her father encouraged her love of art, by taking her to museums and art galleries.

Mother and daughter – Pencil sketches by Remedios Varo (1923)

By 1924 the family had relocated to an apartment on calle Segovia, one of Madrid’s main streets and because fifteen year old Remedios had shown a love of art the family arranged for her to attend the city’s Escuela de Artes y Oficios (School of Arts and Crafts) and later the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where she became one of the first female students of the academy. Like all the major art Academies of Europe, the Academia was known for its strict observance of the methodology of the Old Masters. They would not compromise and those who became disruptive were expelled. The year Remedios started at the Academy was the same year that fellow student, Salvador Dali, returned from his one-year expulsion for leading a student protest over a professional appointment at the Academia. Two years later he was permanently expelled. Despite this strict observance of academic art Remedios became interested in Surrealism. Of her education at the Academy, she said:

“…”I took advantage of all that I learned, in painting the things that interested me on my own, which could be called, together with technique, the beginning of a personality…”

In Janet A. Kaplan’s book, Remedios Varo, Unexpected Journeys she quotes a story from Remedios teenage years, an erotic fantasy she had endured in a dream:

“…One night, a strange being entered through the window and threw itself on top of me; it was like the devil. I resisted, but his eat was immense. The following day and with out having said anything at the table my grandmother said to me ‘Remedios, what has happened to you? Your hair is burned’…”

All her life Remedios would believe in the power of such dream images and in her mind, there was little to differentiate between reality and dreams.

Pencil sketches of Paternal grandmother by Remedios Vara (1925 and 1923)

Her “personality” was her strong attraction to Surrealism, which had gained a foothold in the Madrid art culture. Whilst studying at the Academia she would make many visits to the Prado and became fascinated with the works of Primitive painters, including tribal art from Africa, the South Pacific and Indonesia, as well as prehistoric and very early European art, and European folk art. She also loved the works of Hieronymus Bosch and also the mainstream art of El Greco and Goya. In 1930, she graduated from the Academia with a drawing teacher diploma.

…………………………….. to be continued.