Remedios Varo. This item is unavailable.Remedios Varo

The first major monograph for a worldwide audience on one of the most appealing, mysterious surrealist painters. The volume showcases all the painter’s most important works and Masayo Nonaka’s illuminating text offers a unique insight into the life and work of Remedios Varo. She is acclaimed as one of the most talented women surrealists of the 20th century. Born and raised in Spain, Remedios Varo (1908-1963) received her first training in Madrid, before fleeing the Spanish civil war to join surrealist circles in Paris. At the outbreak of World War II, she was forced to take refuge in Mexico, where she remained until her untimely death in 1963. Known as one of the three brujas (witches) active in the Mexico City art milieu, Varo shared an interest in esotericism with fellow painter Leonora Carrington and a range of interests in science, philosophy, and the literature of German Romanticism with the photographer Kati Horna. For some ten years before her death, she devoted herself to creating an extraordinary dreamlike oeuvre, on the threshold between mysticism and the modern mind.

Remedios Varo y Uranga (1908-1963) was raised in a traditional middle-class family in Spain and rigorously trained at the prestigious San Fernando Academy in Madrid, Dali's alma mater. Varo first found her place in the bohemian avant-garde group in Barcelona. After fleeing the Spanish Civil War with surrealist poet Benjamin Peret, she joined the circle of surrealists in Paris in 1937, and her experimental works were included in surrealist publications and exhibitions. The outbreak of World War II forced her to flee Nazi-occupied Paris. She eventually found refuge in Mexico with Peret, who would later become her husband. She remained there until her untimely death in 1963. For some ten years, from the mid 1950s to 1963, Varo devoted herself to producing her intricate fairy tales, rich with subtle wit, humour and fantasy, for which she has been acclaimed as one of the most talented women surrealists in 20th century art.