Remedios Varo (1908-1963) was a Surrealist painter of Spanish origin who became a naturalized Mexican citizen. Fleeing the Spanish Civil War and then war-torn Europe, she settled in Mexico City, where she developed a dreamlike body of work blending alchemy, science and mysticism.
Remedios Varo(1908 — 1963)
Remedios Varo Uranga
Espagne
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1908 in Anglès (Catalonia, Spain), trained at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid
- Fled the Spanish Civil War and joined the Surrealist circles in Paris during the 1930s
- Went into exile in Mexico City in 1941 to escape the Nazi occupation, where she became close friends with Leonora Carrington
- From the 1950s onward developed her mature style: dreamlike scenes with elongated figures blending science, alchemy and magic
- Died prematurely in 1963 in Mexico City, at the height of her artistic recognition
Works & Achievements
Central panel of a triptych showing young girls confined in a tower, embroidering the world itself; an emblematic work about confinement and creation.
Panel of the triptych depicting an escape aboard a fantastical vessel, a symbol of emancipation and the quest for freedom.
A half-woman, half-owl figure gives life to the birds she paints: an allegory of the creative act linking art, nature, and alchemy.
A painting tinged with critical humor about the fashion for psychoanalysis, in which a woman throws a mask into a well.
A figure composes a musical score by pinning objects and plants onto a staff, illustrating the search for a secret order of the world.
First panel of the autobiographical triptych showing boarders leaving a convent on bicycles, led by a nun.
An illustrated parodic text and a sculpture made of bones, a fake scientific study on human evolution, showcasing her erudite humor.
Anecdotes
As a child, Remedios Varo accompanied her father, a hydraulic engineer, to his construction sites across Spain and North Africa. He taught her technical drawing and perspective, and encouraged her to copy out his blueprints: this almost scientific precision would later reappear in her paintings filled with strange machines.
In Paris during the 1930s, Remedios Varo took part in **André Breton**'s Surrealist group alongside her companion, the poet **Benjamin Péret**. She joined in collective games such as the *cadavre exquis* (“exquisite corpse”), in which each artist draws part of a figure without seeing what the others have done.
Fleeing the advance of the Nazi troops, Varo was interned for a time in France at the start of the Second World War before she was able to set sail in **1941** for Mexico, which was then welcoming many Spanish and European refugees.
In Mexico, Remedios Varo formed a deep friendship with the British painter **Leonora Carrington**. The two women shared a passion for alchemy, the occult sciences, fairy tales and experimental cooking, inventing together whimsical, almost magical recipes.
Varo worked with meticulous slowness, preparing her panels like the old masters and sometimes using unusual techniques: she would blow on the wet paint or press materials onto it to create textures, blending the rigour of the technical drawing she had learned from her father with the freest imagination.
Primary Sources
In it, Varo expresses her world blending humor, science, and mysticism, writing letters addressed to invented recipients and describing imaginary worlds governed by strange laws.
Varo describes her triptych as the story of a young girl escaping a convent-boarding school: an autobiographical tale transposed onto the quest for emancipation and freedom.
Under the pseudonym of an imaginary scholar, Varo invents a parody of an anthropology treatise tracing the evolution of a “wheel-man,” blending feigned erudition with absurd fantasy.
Key Places
Birthplace of Remedios Varo, where she was born in 1908 into an engineer's family.
Fine arts school where Varo received a rigorous academic training in the 1920s.
City where she joined the Surrealist movement in the late 1930s before fleeing the war.
Land of exile and artistic flourishing where Varo lived from 1941 until her death and created the bulk of her work.
City where she stayed in the late 1940s, working as a scientific illustrator for a public health campaign.
Typical Objects
Varo painted mostly in oil on carefully prepared hard panels (masonite), using fine brushes that allowed a meticulous finish close to that of the old masters.
Compasses, rulers and set squares inherited from her apprenticeship with her engineer father, which give her imaginary machines the precision of a blueprint.
Books on alchemy, mysticism and the occult sciences that fed her imagination of transformations and spiritual quests.
A recurring motif in her paintings: towers and cells from which her figures escape, symbols of confinement and emancipation inherited from her convent upbringing.
Hybrid contraptions — boats, capsules, wheeled mechanisms — that populate her canvases and illustrate her fascination with science and the inner journey.
Alchemical laboratory utensils that she often depicted, where her figures distill, mix and transmute matter like learned sorceresses.
School Curriculum
Vocabulary & Tags
Key Vocabulary
Daily Life
Morning
In his Mexico City studio—though Varo was a woman, so: in her Mexico City studio, Varo often began the day with preparatory drawing, tracing the machines and figures of her future paintings with an engineer's precision. She loved the silence and focus of the mornings for preparing her panels.
Afternoon
The afternoon was spent painting slowly in oils, layer after layer, or experimenting with unusual textures. She sometimes welcomed her fellow exiled artist friends to discuss art, science, and esotericism.
Evening
In the evening, Varo read works on alchemy, mysticism, and psychology, and invented whimsical recipes and games with her friend Leonora Carrington. She wrote down her dreams, a source of inspiration for her works.
Food
Like many European exiles in Mexico City, she blended Spanish cooking with Mexican flavors. With Leonora Carrington, she loved to prepare experimental dishes—almost “potions”—inspired by half-serious, half-magical recipes.
Clothing
Varo wore simple, practical studio clothes, often dark, which contrasted with the colorful extravagance of her paintings. Her abundant hair and intense gaze stand out in the photographs of the period.
Housing
She lived in a modest studio-home in Mexico City, cluttered with books, cats, plants, and curious objects. This teeming, animal-filled interior fed directly into the fantastical bestiary of her painting.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Bordando el manto terrestre (Brodant le manteau terrestre)
1961
La huida (La Fuite)
1961
Creación de las aves (Création des oiseaux)
1957
Armonía (Harmonie)
1956
Hacia la torre (Vers la tour)
1960
