In her Mexico City studio, the artist Remedios Varo — who painted meticulous, fantastical scenes in the mid-20th century — kept all her essentials nearby: paintbrushes, oil paints, graphite, hardboard and luminescent quartz crystals, which she charged by moonlight in hopes of harnessing an arcane energy.
Varo — full name María de los Remedios Alicia y Rodriga Varo y Uranga — was a Spanish emigre who joined the creative milieu that turned Mexico’s capital city into a flourishing center for surrealism, the movement founded in Paris by the writer André Breton in the 1930s and ’40s. Like many of her contemporaries, Varo fled Europe as war bore down on the continent, arriving in Mexico in 1941. It took more than a decade for her to exhibit her work there, but when she did, she left her mark.
In mesmerizing, dreamlike scenes teeming with symbolism pulled from science, alchemy, music and the occult, Varo hoped to explore what lies beyond our perception of the world — and to translate those experiences into art. What would it mean to enchant a painting to mystical effect?
