Foreword

Rondeau, James; Pollak, Natalia

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Foreword

James Rondeau and Natalia Pollak

Remedios Varo: Science Fictions

Chicago’s embrace of Surrealism has been deep and profound since the movement’s emergence nearly a century ago, and its swift, subsequent reach far beyond the confines of Europe. Surrealist art and artists have been core to the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibitions, acquisitions, and research, and these initiatives have been pursued...

Author

Caitlin Haskell (Editor), Tere Arcq (Editor)

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100219

Foreword

Chicago’s embrace of Surrealism has been deep and profound since the movement’s emergence nearly a century ago, and its swift, subsequent reach far beyond the confines of Europe. Surrealist art and artists have been core to the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibitions, acquisitions, and research, and these initiatives have been pursued in parallel with our community’s most astute collectors of modern art, who have shared a particular passion for Surrealist painting, found-object sculpture, and book design. As demonstrated by the critical efforts of art historians, the movement has defied rigid definitions and shown a propensity for continual reevaluation and evolution, as it spread geographically during the twentieth century and faced shifting political realities. This exhibition, the first collaboration between the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (MAM), addresses these diverse concepts of Surrealism as it originated in Europe and developed in the Americas, and what it is still in the process of becoming as our understanding of this historical movement continues to evolve.

When Remedios Varo (1908–1963), born María de los Remedios Alicia y Rodriga Varo y Uranga, fled wartime Europe for Mexico in 1941, she did so as an artist already associated with the Surrealist movement. Frida Kahlo, who had met Varo in Paris, was among those to whom Varo wrote as she sought to secure her passage to Mexico, as well as that of her then partner, poet Benjamin Péret. By the time the artist began exhibiting paintings in her adopted homeland of Mexico City, her work had already begun to draw from sources well beyond European Surrealism. Her pictures of the 1950s and early 1960s lay bare—as none had before her—a new dualism that had remained nascent in Surrealism over the previous thirty years: an equal investment in storytelling through figuration and in her artworks’ constituent materials. The manner in which Varo realized her paintings, giving equal weight to narrative and materiality, was uniquely her own. To this day, the mysteries produced by its internal tensions continue to captivate viewers.

For their work on Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, and for shedding new light on both the sources of Varo’s stories and her studio practice, we commend co-curators Caitlin Haskell, the Art Institute’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Tere Arcq, independent scholar and former Chief Curator of MAM. Together, Caitlin and Tere, along with their co-authors and collaborators across our museums, have produced a catalogue and organized an exhibition that bring new critical and art historical acumen to Varo’s practice, making her work available to a broader English-speaking audience than ever before. We could not have made the same impact without our unprecedented access to MAM’s extraordinary holdings of Varo’s works, donated by Walter Gruen and Anna Alexandra Varsoviano in Memoriam of their daughter Isabel Gruen Varsoviano, and also the generosity of nearly a dozen additional private and institutional lenders to the exhibition, nor would it have been possible without the generous support of our sponsors, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Angela Lustig and Dale Taylor, and Gary Metzner and Scott Johnson. Josef and Margot Lakonishok, deeply committed collectors and advocates of Varo’s work, likewise deserve special mention for galvanizing our earliest efforts and sustaining our scholarly work. We must also highlight the fundamental contributions made to this volume by conservators and conservation scientists at the Art Institute. This was the first occasion that Art Institute conservators had the opportunity to research Varo’s technique, and their expert examination of her drawing and painting practice, exemplified in MAM’s unparalleled collection, will allow readers to immerse themselves in the rich world of Varo’s techniques and material manipulations.

This exhibition and collaboration—our museum’s first monographic exhibition to focus on a woman artist active in Mexico and also the first dedicated to a woman Surrealist painter—are the next chapter in our long-established relationship with Surrealism in Chicago. These milestones point to a more inclusive approach to representation in exhibitions about Surrealism, a value reflective of Varo’s own artistic and intellectual community. Together our museums aim to give full voice to the accomplishments of Varo’s art.

James Rondeau
President and Eloise W. Martin Director
The Art Institute of Chicago

Natalia Pollak
Director
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

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