Chronology

Santana, Alivé Piliado

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Chronology

Aliv� Piliado

Remedios Varo: Science Fictions

Chronology

Author

Caitlin Haskell (Editor), Tere Arcq (Editor)

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100225

Chronology

Compiled by Alivé Piliado Santana

1908

DEC. María de los Remedios Alicia y Rodriga Varo y Uranga is born in Anglès, a small town in the Girona province of Catalonia, Spain. Her mother, Ignacia Uranga Bergareche, is a homemaker and her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zejalvo, a hydraulic and civil engineer. Her parents are of Basque and Andalusian origins, respectively. Remedios is the second of three children, with brothers named Rodrigo and Luis, and the only daughter.

1910s

From an early age, Varo is immersed in the ideas of her freethinking, agnostic, Esperanto-speaking father and develops an interest in the principles of his trade, including technical drawing, mathematics, and linear perspective. Her father teaches her to draw, takes her to museums, and encourages her to observe nature and study mineralogy. Her mother, a practicing Catholic, has a more traditional and conservative outlook and fosters in Varo an appreciation of nature by taking her on long walks during which they pick flowers and leaves.

1913

Varo’s father accepts a position in Morocco to work on the design of water canals. The family moves to Algéciras in the Andalusian province Cádiz, where her brother Luis is born, and ultimately relocates to Larache, on the northwest coast of Morocco.

1917

Varo’s family (see FIG. 1) moves to Madrid, and she continues her education at the Instituto de San Isidro, a Catholic school run by nuns. During elementary and middle school, Varo incessantly reads novels and publications on science, philosophy, and mysticism and regularly visits the Prado Museum with her father to view the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, and Diego Velázquez.1Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo: En el centro del microcosmos (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990), 36.

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Description: Remedios Varo and her family in Madrid

FIG. 1. Remedios Varo and her family in Madrid, 1918.

1925

Varo enrolls at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid; she is one of the few women at the school. She takes classes in composition, painting, perspective, scientific drawing, and anatomy—a course only recently opened to female students.2For more on women in the Academy of San Fernando, see África Cabanillas Casafranca and Amparo Serrano de Haro, “Women in the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (1873–1967),” Academia: Boletín de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, no. 121 (2019): 111–36. Varo excels at drawing and plays pranks in the academy with her friend and classmate Francis Bartolozzi.3Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo, 39. Based on a 1986 interview by Beatriz Varo with Francis Bartolozzi in Pamplona. Bartalozzi remembered them disrupting an exhibition of work by award-winning students at the academy and hoisting a sculpture into the air.

She first learns of Surrealism through lectures and talks in cafes in the city and encounters the work of Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, and Federico García Lorca at the cultural institution Residencia de Estudiantes.

1929

After finishing her studies at the academy, Varo participates in her first group exhibitions, one organized by the academy and another by the Madrid Draftsman’s Union.4Janet A. Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 41. Based on a 1986 interview by Beatriz Varo with José Luis Florit in Barcelona. She also designs the poster for the French release of the film La aldea maldita (The Cursed Village), directed by Florián Rey, which premieres a year later (see FIG. 2).5See José Luis Alcaide, “‘La aldea maldita’ y la cultura fin de siglo,” Ars Longa 13 (2004): 121–35.

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Description: Poster for Le village maudit (The Cursed Village) by Varo, Remedios

FIG. 2. Varo’s poster for Le village maudit (The Cursed Village), 1930. Collection of J. Milicua, Barcelona.

1930

SEPT. 6 Varo marries Gerardo Lizarraga, a fellow student and painter, in San Sebastián. Attracted by the vibrant arts scene, they move to Paris for a year, where they struggle financially.

1932

Relocating to Barcelona, Varo begins her commercial work for the Thompson advertising firm. She shares a studio in Plaza Lesseps with the artist Esteban Francés and befriends Óscar Domínguez and José Luis Florit. She and Domínguez collaborate on poster designs for the French confectionery company Krema. She separates from Lizarraga but maintains a close relationship with him for the rest of her life.

1933

Varo’s father dies in December.

1935

Immersed in Barcelona’s artistic avant-garde with other Spanish artists, Varo dedicates herself to exploring new methods of artistic creation with her friends and colleagues Domínguez, Francés, and Marcel Jean. Together they produce an exquisite corpse (see FIG. 3), among other works.6See Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 41.

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Description: Untitled (Cadavre exquis) by Varo, Remedios; Dominguez, Oscar; Francés, Esteve;...

FIG. 3. Varo, Óscar Domínguez (Spanish, 1906–1957), Esteban Francés (Spanish, 1913–1976), and Marcel Jean (French, 1900–1993). Untitled (Cadavre exquis), 1935. Composite collage of cut-and-pasted printed paper on paper; 27.3 × 20.8 cm (10 ⅞ × 8 ¼ in.). The Museum of Modern Art, F. H. Hirschland Fund.

She participates in an exhibition at the Gran Vía de Madrid Café alongside Florit, where she exhibits drawings on paper and paintings on metal.7Walter Gruen and Tere Arcq, “Chronology,” in Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo, ed. Margarita de Orellana, trans. Lorna Scott Fox, Richard Moszka, and Quentin Pope (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2008), 209.

1936

MAY Varo shows work in the Logicofobistas (Logicophobiste) group exhibition along with Joseph Viola, Esteban Francés, Jaume Sans, and Maruja Mallo, a group of artists with Surrealist inclinations and whose interests combine art and metaphysics. In an interview they express an aversion to reason and logic, which they describe as a “simple practical instrument.”8Fina Duran i Riu, “Esteve Frances,” in Logicofobistas 1936: El Surrealismo como revolución del espíritu (Valladolid, Spain: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español), 56. Recognized as one of the most influential Spanish Surrealist exhibitions, the show runs from May 4 to 15 at the Catalonia de Barcelona gallery sponsored by the artists’ group ADLAN (Amics de l’Art Nou) [Friends of the New Art].9Josep Miquel García, Logicofobistas, 24. The opening date, May 4, is documented, but the closing date, which should have been May 15, is uncertain; on June 6 La vanguardia published a note that the exhibition had been extended for a few days. La vanguardia, June 6, 1936, 9.

The Spanish Civil War breaks out, and Barcelona begins to suffer the effects, cutting short the group’s plans to exhibit outside of Spain.10Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo, 48.

Domínguez introduces Varo to the French Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, who traveled to Spain to support the Anti-Nationalist cause, and she begins a relationship with him (see FIG. 4). In a letter addressed to Surrealist writer André Breton, Péret states, “I have a love story here that keeps me until the young woman can accompany me to Paris, so I don’t know when my return will be.”11André Breton and Benjamin Péret, Correspondance, 1920–1959, ed. Gérard Roche (Paris: Gallimard, 2017), 51. Translation by Tere Arcq.

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Description: Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret, Remedios Varo, and André Breton, France

FIG. 4. From left: Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret, Varo, and André Breton, France, 1941.

1937

After Nationalist Franco troops assassinate Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, Varo flees to Paris with Francés. She never returns to Spain. They share a studio in Montparnasse with Péret, who traveled to Paris before them. She enters the intimate circle of French Surrealism and meets Breton, Victor Brauner, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Gordon Onslow Ford, Dora Maar, Roberto Matta, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, and Alice Rahon, a group she visits frequently at the café Les Deux Magots.12Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 60. She exhibits her work at the International Exhibition of Surrealism held in Tokyo and Surrealist Objects & Poems in London. Her painting Le désir (Desire) (1935; private collection, Paris) is published in the tenth issue of Minotaure magazine (see FIG. 5).

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Description: Minotaure, no. 10 by Varo, Remedios

FIG. 5. Varo’s Le désir was published in Minotaure, no. 10 (1937), along with works by Espinoza (nationality unknown, active 20th century), Paul Nash (English, 1889–1946), and René Magritte (Belgian, 1989–1967), whom she would meet three years later. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

1938

Varo’s work is featured in the magazines Trajectoire du rêve and Visage du monde, and she creates vignettes for the Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme by Breton and Paul Éluard. She participates in the International Exhibition of Surrealism at Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at Galerie Robert in Amsterdam.13Gruen and Arcq, “Chronology,” 210.

Seeking economic stability, she takes on commercial and advertising work, translates lectures into Spanish, restores artworks, and, together with Domínguez, allegedly forges paintings by Giorgio de Chirico.14Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 64.

Varo’s brother Luis dies shortly after being appointed Complement Lieutenant in the Francoist military regime during the Spanish Civil War.15Luis Varo’s appointment is based on the last official Spanish bulletin that includes him in the military ranks. See Boletin oficial del estado, Feb. 25, 1938, no. 492, 5952, bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/es/catalogo_imagenes/grupo.do?path=16472.

1939

Varo meets the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who traveled to Paris to participate in the group exhibition Mexique, organized by Breton with the support of Marcel Duchamp, at the Pierre Colle Gallery.16Hayden Herrera, Frida: Una biografía de Frida Kahlo (Mexico City: Diana, 2004), 308.

The political situation in Europe grows increasingly complicated after the Spanish Republican Armed Forces are defeated and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco begins. While watching a documentary filmed by her Hungarian friend Emérico (Chiki) Weisz about concentration camps for Spanish refugees in France, Varo recognizes Lizarraga (he had fought in Spain until the fall of the Republican side). Varo immediately mobilizes all her resources to liberate him from the concentration camp at Argelès-sur-Mer.

APR. 7 Devising a plan to escape from Europe with Péret, Varo sends a letter to Kahlo, asking that she help them take refuge in Mexico and intercede for Lizarraga at the concentration camp.17Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera sought government help in arranging the migration of 400 Spanish Republican refugees to Mexico through their contacts with then-Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas. Ibid., 314. Varo writes, “If you can do something for us I will be infinitely grateful, my only wish is to be able to get out of this mousetrap as soon as possible and breathe with my lungs widened.”18Remedios Varo, letter to Frida Kahlo, Apr. 7, 1939. Archivo Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Banco de México, Fiduciario en el Fideicomiso Museos Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.

1940

JAN.–FEB. Varo’s painting Recuerdo de la walkiria (Souvenir of the Valkyrie) (1938; private collection) is shown at the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Mexico City, organized by César Moro and Paalen at Galería de Arte Mexicano. Varo is imprisoned in the winter but never shares the details of this experience.19She was possibly incarcerated for hiding a deserter from the French army. Walter Gruen, “Remedios Varo: A Biographical Sketch,” trans. Susan Beth Kapilian, in Remedios Varo: Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Ricardo Ovalle and Walter Gruen, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2002), 104.

MAY–JULY Péret refuses to join the French army and is imprisoned for political activism. He is released by the end of July, when the Franco-German Armistice of June 22, 1940, goes into effect after the Nazi occupation of France.

JUNE Varo flees Paris and settles in a small town on the Mediterranean coast, Canet-Plage, France, where she finds Brauner and Domínguez and meets Henri Goetz, René Magritte, and Robert Ruis. Later, she travels to Marseille, where she joins Péret and other artists seeking to leave France, such as Breton and Jacqueline Lamba, Wifredo Lam, Antoine and Consuelo de Saint Exupéry, and Victor Serge.

1941

OCT. Crossing Argelia and Morocco, Varo and Péret arrive in Casablanca and wait to relocate to Mexico. They are aided by Breton—who obtained the funds for their tickets through the sponsorship of Helena Rubinstein—and Varian Fry, a member of the Emergency Rescue Committee.20Founded in New York in 1940 by German and American intellectuals, the Emergency Rescue Committee helped artists and intellectuals escape from France. See Remedios Varo (also Benjamin Péret), 1941, Box 3, Folder 21, Emergency Rescue Committee Records, 1936–56. M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York.

NOV. 6–DEC. Varo and Péret cross the Atlantic Ocean on board the Serpa Pinto and arrive at the Port of Veracruz, in Mexico (see FIG. 6).21She was granted political refugee status. This allowed her to reside and work in Mexico thanks to the international policies of then—Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, which let more than twenty-five thousand Spanish exiles join Mexico’s labor and cultural force during the 1940s. For more on Spanish exiles in Mexico, see Armando Pavón Romero, Clara Inés Ramírez González, and Ambrosio Velasco Gómez, Estudios y testimonios sobre el exilio español en México: Una visión sobre su presencia en las humanidades (Mexico City: Bonilla Artigas, 2016). They move to 18 Gabino Barreda Street in the San Rafael neighborhood of Mexico City and immediately join other exiled artists and Mexican artists in a close community of support. Among them are Carrington, Francés, Gunther Gerzso, Kati and José Horna, Lizarraga, Moro, Jean Nicolle, Paalen, Octavio Paz, Rahon, Eva Sulzer, and Chiki Weisz (see FIG. 7).

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Description: Remedios Varo's registration card in the Mexican National Registry of Foreigners

FIG. 6. Varo’s registration card in the Mexican National Registry of Foreigners, 1942. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

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Description: Remedios Varo and friends at Leonora Carrington and Emérico (Chiki) Weisz's...

FIG. 7. Kati Horna (Spanish, born Hungary, 1912–2000). Varo and friends at Leonora Carrington and Emérico (Chiki) Weisz’s wedding in Mexico, 1946. Front (left to right): Weisz, Carrington, Benjamin Péret, and Miriam Wolf. Back (left to right): Gerardo Lizarraga, José Horna, Remedios Varo, and Gunther Gerzso.

1942

Varo (see FIG. 8) is determined to continue her creative work in Mexico, and she and Francés collaborate with Marc Chagall on the costume design for the ballet Aleko, which premieres at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. She also restores pre-Hispanic art pieces, does advertising work, paints furniture for Galería Clardecor, and works with José Horna painting the toys he builds.

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Description: Remedios Varo in Mexico City

FIG. 8. Varo in Mexico City, c. 1942. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

Varo continues her friendships with Paalen and Rahon and develops a close relationship with Carrington that involves, at times, daily visits, which deeply inform both artists’ bodies of work.

1943

FEB. 20 The Paricutín volcano emerges and erupts in Michoacán. The natural phenomenon captivates artists and scientists who travel to the site, among them likely Varo. On several occasions, she visits her friends Gordon Onslow Ford and Jacqueline Johnson at their home close to the volcano in Erongarícuaro, Mexico (see FIG. 9). Varo and Onslow Ford share an interest in Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky’s theories about the fourth dimension.22Tere Arcq, “In Search of the Miraculous,” in Five Keys, 30.

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Description: Jacqueline Johnson, Gordon Onslow Ford, Remedios Varo, and César Moro, at El...

FIG. 9. Jacqueline Johnson, Gordon Onslow Ford, Varo, and César Moro, at El Molino in Erongarícuaro, Mexico, c. 1946. Photo by Elizabeth Onslow Ford Rouslin. Lucid Art Foundation.

Varo develops a close friendship with Kati Horna. Varo, Carrington, and Horna remain loyal friends for the rest of their lives. Together they perform esoteric rituals, culinary experiments, and artistic games.23For more on these practices, see Stefan van Raay, Joanna Moorhead, and Teresa Arcq, Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Kati Horna (Farnham, England: Lund Humphries, 2010).

1944

Varo’s home at 18 Gabino Barreda Street becomes a meeting space for recently arrived exiles. In 1944 the Mexican artist Gunther Gerzso depicts Varo and their friends in the painting Los días de la calle Gabino Barreda (The Days of Gabino Barreda Street) (see FIG. 3).

1945

Varo produces the work Icono (Icon) (see FIG. 4). The painting includes many references to the teachings of Russian Armenian mystic and philosopher George I. Gurdjieff. Commissioned by Enrique Caraminola, an Argentinian follower of Gurdjieff, the piece is the first evidence of Varo’s involvement with this community.

1946

In Cholula, Puebla, Varo and Benjamin Péret get married, which enables her to obtain a passport to travel to South America.

1947

Varo and Péret separate, and he returns to Paris and participates in the group exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 (Surrealism in 1947) at the Galerie Maeght.24André Breton, Benjamin Péret, Victor Brauner, Henry Miller, et al., eds., Le Surréalisme en 1947, exh. cat. (Paris: Pierre à feu, Galerie Maeght, 1947), cat. 9. Although Varo is listed in the exhibition catalogue, no image of her work is reproduced. A letter from Péret to Breton detailing Varo’s bad health, material needs, and lack of painting in recent years suggests that Varo did not send anything for the show. See Breton and Péret, Correspondance, 250–53.

Varo travels to Venezuela with the French pilot Jean Nicolle (see FIG. 10), embarking on a scientific expedition organized by the French Institute of Latin America. For the first time in more than ten years, she reunites with her mother and brother Rodrigo in Venezuela, where he serves as a sanitation chief officer in the Venezuelan Ministry of Public Health. Varo studies mosquitoes and insects and makes drawings for campaigns of the Malariology Division of the Ministry of Public Health.

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Description: Remedios Varo and Jean Nicolle in Venezuela

FIG. 10. Varo and Jean Nicolle in Venezuela, c. 1948. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

Moro invites her to publish in the Peruvian magazine Las Moradas, which features her works alongside those of Antonin Artaud, Carrington, Agustín Lazo, and others.

1948

FEB. While in Caracas, Varo receives a letter from the Mexican publicity firm Abastecedora de Impresos S. A. They ask her to create prints (see FIG. 11) for their clients, Casa Bayer among them. She starts sending illustrations for advertisements to the company in Mexico, signing this commercial work with her mother’s last name, Uranga.

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Description: Rheumatic Pain II (Rheumatism, Lumbago, Sciatica) (Dolor reumático II [Reuma,...

FIG. 11. Dolor reumático II (Reuma, lumbago, ciática) (Rheumatic Pain II [Rheumatism, Lumbago, Sciatica]), c. 1948–49. Varo’s original gouache was reproduced by Casa Bayer in an advertisement for pain medication. Image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1949

Varo returns to Mexico City and continues to work in advertising. She meets Rodney Collin-Smith (a close disciple of Ouspensky), who had recently founded the publishing house Ediciones Sol in Mexico City and the Librería Británica bookstore, which sells mostly books on occult sciences and esotericism. Varo attends some meetings but does not become an active member of the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky groups in Mexico.25Arcq, “In Search of the Miraculous,” 35.

1950

Varo gathers with the leaders of the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky groups and meets Christopher Fremantle, an artist seeking to apply Gurdjieff’s theories to the visual arts. She participates in his workshop Form and Color, observing objects and colors continuously for up to seven hours.26Ibid., 37.

She ends her relationship with Jean Nicolle, though they remain close.

1952

Varo begins a relationship with Austrian refugee Walter Gruen, founder of the Sala Margolín classical-music store in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, and moves into an apartment on Álvaro Obregón Avenue, also in this neighborhood. She begins to dedicate herself fully to painting and drawing, ceasing her commercial and advertising work.

Her close friends Carrington and Kati Horna also live in Roma, and they gather frequently to discuss alchemy, magic, and witchcraft and to make art, costumes (see FIG. 12), and food. Carrington and Varo co-author the play El santo cuerpo grasoso (The Holy Oily Body).27The play is reproduced in Edith Mendoza Bolio, A veces escribo como si trazase un boceto: Los escritos de Remedios Varo (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010), 104.

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Description: Remedios Varo Wearing a Mask by Leonora Carrington by Horna, Kati

FIG. 12a. Kati Horna. Remedios Varo Wearing a Mask by Leonora Carrington, 1957. Gelatin silver print; 26.5 × 27.2 cm (10 7⁄16 × 10 11⁄16 in.). Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, National Gallery of Art.

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FIG. 12b. Kati Horna. Remedios Varo Wearing a Mask by Leonora Carrington, 1957. Gelatin silver print; 26.7 × 25.1 cm (10 ½ × 9 ⅞ in.). Museum purchase funded by Macey Hodges Reasoner in honor of Lynn Randolph, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

1955

Varo receives an invitation from Rosita García Ascot and Jesús Bal y Gay, the founders of Galería Diana (an exhibition hall, music shop, and art supply vendor), to participate in the group exhibition 6 pintoras (6 Painters), which features her recent paintings Ciencia inútil, o El alquimista (Useless Science, or The Alchemist) (CAT. 1) and Música solar (Solar Music) (CAT. 3).28The exhibition ran from July 28 to August 15 at Galería Diana located in Paseo de la Reforma 489, and the works were originally exhibited as Laberinto mecánico and Música de la luz. See 6 Pintoras [brochure] (Mexico City; Galería Diana, 1955). Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura (hereafter Remedios Varo Archive, MAM). Also displayed are works by Carrington, Solange de Forge, Elvira Gascón, Rahon, and Cordelia Urueta. The Mexican press calls her art a revelation and praises her technical skill.29Margarita Nelken, “La de Seis Pintoras,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Aug. 2, 1955, 6b. Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM.

Varo starts writing letters to her brother Rodrigo, who now lives in Spain. She briefly describes her paintings and attaches photographs of her works.30See Remedios Varo, Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, trans. Margaret Carson (Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 2018).

1956

APR. 25 Varo’s first solo exhibition opens at Galería Diana, again receiving attention from the Mexican press and collectors. Among the twelve works exhibited are the paintings El flautista (The Flutist) (CAT. 12), Hallazgo (Discovery) (CAT. 10), El juglar (El malabarista) (The Juggler [The Magician]) (CAT. 8), and Simpatía (Sympathy) (CAT. 14) and the drawing La calle de las presencias ocultas (Street with Hidden Beings) (1956; private collection). The art critic Jorge J. Crespo de la Serna lauds her work as “art saturated with mystery and yet with an amazing clarity. We had come across a discovery, a true revelation.”31Jorge J. Crespo de la Serna, “Hechizo de Remedios Varo,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, May 27, 1956, 4. Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM.

Varo meets Juliana González, a Mexican philosophy student and writer with whom she forms a close, lifelong friendship.

At her studio in Colonia Roma, Varo paints incessantly and finishes Armonía (Harmony) (CAT. 4) and Cazadora de astros (Star Catcher) (CAT. 15), among other works.

1957

JULY 13 A memorial exhibition to Frida Kahlo, organized by the Unión Democrática de Mujeres Mexicanas, opens in the Lola Álvarez Bravo Gallery and features Varo’s work.32Raquel Tibol, “Remedios Varo: Apuntamientos y Testimonios,” in Remedios Varo, ed. Octavio Paz, exh. cat. (Madrid: Fundación del Banco Exterior, 1988), 47.

Varo maintains a very close relationship with Lizarraga, who also emigrated to Mexico years before, as well as with his wife, the photographer Ikerne Cruchaga (see FIG. 13), and their two children, Xabier and Amaya (see FIG. 14). On occasion, Gerardo and Ikerne pose as models for Varo’s paintings.33Xabier Lizarraga Cruchaga, interview by Tere Arcq, Mexico City, May 16, 2022, translated by Alivé Piliado Santana.

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Description: Remedios Varo with Gerardo Lizarraga by Cruchaga, Ikerne

FIG. 13. Ikerne Cruchaga (Spanish, 1918–1990). Remedios Varo with Gerardo Lizarraga, n.d. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

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Description: Remedios Varo with friend and collector Eva Sulzer and Gerardo Lizarraga's children,...

FIG. 14. Varo with friend and collector Eva Sulzer and Gerardo Lizarraga’s children, Xabier and Amaya, n.d. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

The Mexican art critic Raquel Tibol interviews Varo at her home. Asked about the Surrealist group’s influence on her paintings, she replies, “Today, I don’t belong to any group, I paint whatever comes to my mind, and that’s it. I don’t want to talk about myself because I have a deep-rooted belief that what matters is the work, not the person. I am not interested in controversy or any attitude, I am simply peaceful, I need peace.”34Raquel Tibol, “Primera Investigación de Remedios Varo,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, July 28, 1957, 6. Translation by the author.

Varo completes more than twenty-two paintings at her studio, among them Creación de las aves (Creation of the Birds) (CAT. 7) and Vagabundo (Vagabond) (CAT. 20).

1958

Varo travels to Paris to reunite with Péret, who is very ill. She also visits her mother and niece in the French capital and sees old friends and places she frequented before the war. The trip is an emotional shock for Varo; in a letter to Walter Gruen, she writes:

Today it has been a week since I left Mexico. My God! How I long to go back, although now I don’t feel so bad. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that I definitely do not belong to these people [Surrealists] and things anymore, things I am no longer very interested in. I can see that my life—not only in material or emotional terms, but also my intellectual life—is there in that land I sincerely love with all its faults, shortcomings, and hardships.35Ricardo Ovalle and Walter Gruen, eds., Remedios Varo: Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1998), 107.

After Varo returns from Paris, Kati Horna takes several photographs of her at the artist’s home and studio, including in front of her easel (see FIG. 15).

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Description: Remedios Varo at her studio in Mexico City by Horna, Kati

FIG. 15. Kati Horna. Varo at her studio in Mexico City, 1958. Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

At the end of the year, Varo wins the first prize in the Salón de Pintura Femenina at Galerías Excélsior for her paintings Armonía and Sea usted breve (Be Brief ) (1958; private collection, Mexico).36“Fastuosa apertura del primer Salón de la Plástica Femenina,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Nov. 9, 1958, 1. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM.

1959

Museographer Fernando Gamboa commissions Varo to create a mural for the Cancer Pavilion at the Medical Center in Mexico City. She accepts the commission and makes sketches; later, however, she abandons the project.37See Dina Comisarenco Mirkin, Eclipse de siete lunas: Mujeres muralistas en México (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2017), 139–41.

After hurting her right wrist, Varo draws sketches with her left hand (see FIG. 16). She conceives Homo Rodans (CAT. 19A), a sculpture produced with animal bones and a manuscript (CAT. 19B) that mocks the science of Western anthropology. The sculpture and book are exhibited in the back of the bookstore owned by her friend Juan Martín.

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Description: Winged Personage (Personaje alado) by Varo, Remedios

FIG. 16. Personaje alado (Winged Personage), 1959. Graphite on paper; 22.5 × 17 cm (8 ⅞ × 6 11⁄16 in.). Collection Mauricio Hernández, Mexico City. CR no. 260.

Varo finishes Exploración de las fuentes del río Orinoco (Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River) (CAT. 17).

1960

Inspired by conversations about psychoanalysis with her friend Juliana González, Varo paints Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista (Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst) (CAT. 22), alternately titled Podría ser Juliana (Could Be Juliana). This year she also produces Nave astral (Starship) (CAT. 13) and Nacer de nuevo (To Be Reborn) (CAT. 16).

SEPT. 5–NOV. 5 Varo participates in the Second Interamerican Biennial Exhibition in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

1961

MAY 10–30 The VI Tokyo Biennial includes artwork by Varo as well as the Mexican artists Manuel Felguérez and Lilia Carrillo.

Varo completes one of her most ambitious large-scale projects: a triptych comprising Hacia la torre (Toward the Tower) (CAT. 24), Bordando el manto terrestre (Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle) (CAT. 25), and La huida (The Escape) (CAT. 26).

1962

JUNE Varo presents her second solo exhibition, this time at Galería Juan Martín in Mexico City (see FIG. 17). All sixteen artworks presented are sold, including the triptych panels, which are sold to three different buyers. The press acclaims the pictorial mastery of Varo and describes her as a “magical genius of a great artist.”38Manuel Machinn Gurria, “Remedios Varo,” Revista de América, no. 861 (June 23, 1962). Binder 12, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM

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Description: Remedios Varo, en la Juan Martín

FIG. 17. “Remedios Varo, en la Juan Martín,” Excélsior, June 20, 1962, 7B. Binder 12, Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura.

APR. In an interview with Luis Islas García, Varo discusses the general purpose of her work: “I deliberately proposed to make a mystical work, in the sense of revealing a mystery, or better, of expressing it through forms that do not always correspond to a logical order, but to an intuitive, divinatory and irrational order.”39Luis Islas García, “Remedios Varo: En pintura me interesa lo místico, lo misterioso,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, Apr. 3[?], 1962. Binder 12, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. Translation by the author. Further research is needed to confirm the date of this source. The supplement was published on Sundays; April 3, 1962, however, was a Tuesday.

1963

OCT. 8 At age 55, at the height of her artistic career, Varo dies at her home. The official cause is listed as a heart attack.40Alfonso de Neuvillate, “En memoria de Remedios Varo (1913–1963),” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, Oct. 20, 1963, 4. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. She is buried in the Panteón Jardín, south of Mexico City. She would later share the grave space with her friend and patron Eva Sulzer.41Remedios Varo was buried at Panteón Jardín, Desierto de los Leones Km. 14.5, San Ángel Inn, Álvaro Obregón, 01060, Mexico City. The community of Mexican and migrant artists mourns Varo’s death and the press declares the loss of the “daughter of the imagination, inventor of universes.”42Francisco Zendejas, “Carta planetaria,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Oct. 20, 1963. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM.

SEPT.–DEC. After her death, Varo’s work is exhibited in the VIII São Paulo Biennial in the Mexican section of Surrealist and Fantastic Art.

1964

AUG. Walter Gruen organizes a memorial exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Palacio de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City. La obra de Remedios Varo (The Work of Remedios Varo) receives a record number of visitors who admire the 128 works on view.43Margarita Nelken, “Retrospectiva de Remedios Varo,” Revista internacional y diplomática, no. 166, Sept. 7, 1964. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM.

Readers are advised to consult the following publications, which informed this chronology:

Walter Gruen and Tere Arcq, “Chronology,” in Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo, ed. Margarita de Orellana, trans. Lorna Scott Fox, Richard Moszka, and Quentin Pope (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2008), 207–15.

Luis Miguel León, Marisol Argüelles, and Fabienne Bradu, Adictos a Remedios Varo: Nuevo legado 2018, ed. Luis Miguel León, 1st ed. (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2018), 328–39.

Walter Gruen and Ricardo Ovalle, eds., Remedios Varo: Catalogue Raisonné, trans. Susan Beth Kapilian and Laura Gorham, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2002).

1 Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo: En el centro del microcosmos (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990), 36. »

2 For more on women in the Academy of San Fernando, see África Cabanillas Casafranca and Amparo Serrano de Haro, “Women in the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (1873–1967),” Academia: Boletín de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, no. 121 (2019): 111–36. »

3 Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo, 39. Based on a 1986 interview by Beatriz Varo with Francis Bartolozzi in Pamplona. Bartalozzi remembered them disrupting an exhibition of work by award-winning students at the academy and hoisting a sculpture into the air. »

4 Janet A. Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 41. Based on a 1986 interview by Beatriz Varo with José Luis Florit in Barcelona. »

5 See José Luis Alcaide, “‘La aldea maldita’ y la cultura fin de siglo,” Ars Longa 13 (2004): 121–35. »

6 See Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 41. »

7 Walter Gruen and Tere Arcq, “Chronology,” in Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo, ed. Margarita de Orellana, trans. Lorna Scott Fox, Richard Moszka, and Quentin Pope (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2008), 209. »

8 Fina Duran i Riu, “Esteve Frances,” in Logicofobistas 1936: El Surrealismo como revolución del espíritu (Valladolid, Spain: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español), 56. »

9 Josep Miquel García, Logicofobistas, 24. The opening date, May 4, is documented, but the closing date, which should have been May 15, is uncertain; on June 6 La vanguardia published a note that the exhibition had been extended for a few days. La vanguardia, June 6, 1936, 9. »

10 Beatriz Varo, Remedios Varo, 48. »

11 André Breton and Benjamin Péret, Correspondance, 1920–1959, ed. Gérard Roche (Paris: Gallimard, 2017), 51. Translation by Tere Arcq. »

12 Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 60. »

13 Gruen and Arcq, “Chronology,” 210. »

14 Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys, 64. »

15 Luis Varo’s appointment is based on the last official Spanish bulletin that includes him in the military ranks. See Boletin oficial del estado, Feb. 25, 1938, no. 492, 5952, bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/es/catalogo_imagenes/grupo.do?path=16472. »

16 Hayden Herrera, Frida: Una biografía de Frida Kahlo (Mexico City: Diana, 2004), 308. »

17 Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera sought government help in arranging the migration of 400 Spanish Republican refugees to Mexico through their contacts with then-Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas. Ibid., 314. »

18 Remedios Varo, letter to Frida Kahlo, Apr. 7, 1939. Archivo Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Banco de México, Fiduciario en el Fideicomiso Museos Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. »

19 She was possibly incarcerated for hiding a deserter from the French army. Walter Gruen, “Remedios Varo: A Biographical Sketch,” trans. Susan Beth Kapilian, in Remedios Varo: Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Ricardo Ovalle and Walter Gruen, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2002), 104. »

20 Founded in New York in 1940 by German and American intellectuals, the Emergency Rescue Committee helped artists and intellectuals escape from France. See Remedios Varo (also Benjamin Péret), 1941, Box 3, Folder 21, Emergency Rescue Committee Records, 1936–56. M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York. »

21 She was granted political refugee status. This allowed her to reside and work in Mexico thanks to the international policies of then—Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, which let more than twenty-five thousand Spanish exiles join Mexico’s labor and cultural force during the 1940s. For more on Spanish exiles in Mexico, see Armando Pavón Romero, Clara Inés Ramírez González, and Ambrosio Velasco Gómez, Estudios y testimonios sobre el exilio español en México: Una visión sobre su presencia en las humanidades (Mexico City: Bonilla Artigas, 2016). »

22 Tere Arcq, “In Search of the Miraculous,” in Five Keys, 30. »

23 For more on these practices, see Stefan van Raay, Joanna Moorhead, and Teresa Arcq, Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Kati Horna (Farnham, England: Lund Humphries, 2010). »

24 André Breton, Benjamin Péret, Victor Brauner, Henry Miller, et al., eds., Le Surréalisme en 1947, exh. cat. (Paris: Pierre à feu, Galerie Maeght, 1947), cat. 9. Although Varo is listed in the exhibition catalogue, no image of her work is reproduced. A letter from Péret to Breton detailing Varo’s bad health, material needs, and lack of painting in recent years suggests that Varo did not send anything for the show. See Breton and Péret, Correspondance, 250–53. »

25 Arcq, “In Search of the Miraculous,” 35. »

26 Ibid., 37. »

27 The play is reproduced in Edith Mendoza Bolio, A veces escribo como si trazase un boceto: Los escritos de Remedios Varo (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010), 104. »

28 The exhibition ran from July 28 to August 15 at Galería Diana located in Paseo de la Reforma 489, and the works were originally exhibited as Laberinto mecánico and Música de la luz. See 6 Pintoras [brochure] (Mexico City; Galería Diana, 1955). Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, Museo de Arte Moderno. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura (hereafter Remedios Varo Archive, MAM). »

29 Margarita Nelken, “La de Seis Pintoras,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Aug. 2, 1955, 6b. Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

30 See Remedios Varo, Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, trans. Margaret Carson (Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 2018). »

31 Jorge J. Crespo de la Serna, “Hechizo de Remedios Varo,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, May 27, 1956, 4. Binder 10, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

32 Raquel Tibol, “Remedios Varo: Apuntamientos y Testimonios,” in Remedios Varo, ed. Octavio Paz, exh. cat. (Madrid: Fundación del Banco Exterior, 1988), 47. »

33 Xabier Lizarraga Cruchaga, interview by Tere Arcq, Mexico City, May 16, 2022, translated by Alivé Piliado Santana. »

34 Raquel Tibol, “Primera Investigación de Remedios Varo,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, July 28, 1957, 6. Translation by the author. »

35 Ricardo Ovalle and Walter Gruen, eds., Remedios Varo: Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1998), 107. »

36 “Fastuosa apertura del primer Salón de la Plástica Femenina,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Nov. 9, 1958, 1. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

37 See Dina Comisarenco Mirkin, Eclipse de siete lunas: Mujeres muralistas en México (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2017), 139–41. »

38 Manuel Machinn Gurria, “Remedios Varo,” Revista de América, no. 861 (June 23, 1962). Binder 12, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM »

39 Luis Islas García, “Remedios Varo: En pintura me interesa lo místico, lo misterioso,” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, Apr. 3[?], 1962. Binder 12, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. Translation by the author. Further research is needed to confirm the date of this source. The supplement was published on Sundays; April 3, 1962, however, was a Tuesday. »

40 Alfonso de Neuvillate, “En memoria de Remedios Varo (1913–1963),” México en la cultura, supplement, Novedades, Oct. 20, 1963, 4. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

41 Remedios Varo was buried at Panteón Jardín, Desierto de los Leones Km. 14.5, San Ángel Inn, Álvaro Obregón, 01060, Mexico City. »

42 Francisco Zendejas, “Carta planetaria,” Diorama de la cultura, supplement, Excélsior, Oct. 20, 1963. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

43 Margarita Nelken, “Retrospectiva de Remedios Varo,” Revista internacional y diplomática, no. 166, Sept. 7, 1964. Binder 11, Remedios Varo Archive, MAM. »

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