My full name is Remedios Varo, like most female members of the surrealist school of painting, not many people have heard my name.
I was born in Angles, Spain in 1908. When I was young, I often traveled with my father throughout Spain and North Africa. I acquired an early interest in mathematics, mechanical drawing, and fantastic locomotive vehicles from my father, a hydraulic engineer, and was educated in Spanish convent schools. There my artistic training was strict and academic, from which I fled into Barcelona's bohemian artistic circle. At the age of 15, I attended the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid where I learned about Surrealism. I was attracted to the idea of expressing my emotions using figures and symbols.After a brief marriage to a fellow student, I met and married the Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret in Barcelona (where I had moved to become part of a more avant-garde milieu.)I settled in Paris with Peret at the end of the Spanish Civil War and was active in Surrealist circles there between 1937 and 1939.We were forced to flee France for political reasons, and were prevented from travelling to New York with other Surrealist emigres because of Peret's leftist political affiliations and support for the Loyalist cause in Spain. Penniless, we waited months in Casablanca because we were told we didn't have the right papers.I remembered from my childhod trips to North Africa with my father that Moslem dead must be wrapped in white for their final meeting with God, and was able to raise a litle money for the voyage by selling the few white bed sheets that I had been able to pack.Finally, influential friends, working through Varian Frye's French Relief Committee in Marseilles, managed to secure steamer passage for us.In Novemebr 1941, after a long and difficult journey, we arrived in Mexico, with no money other than the small allowance paid to Spanish political exiles by the Mexican government. We settled in a decaying apartment building on Gabino Barreda, not far from the ancient Aztec center of Mexico City and near the more recent Monument to the Revolution.I immediately began the wearying task of providing an income, an undertaking dictated by necessity, but one that would drain much time and energy from my painting for the next ten years.Peret's belief that Diego Rivera had sanctioned an early attempt on Trotsky's life by a group that included the Mexican painter David Siquieros inhibited our contacts.The couple joined an active group of expatriate painters and writers that included Leonora Carrington. A close relationship developed between Carrington and I. Working together we created a new pictorial language more relevant to owr own styles and requirements.We became absorbed in mysticism, sharing dreams, stories, and magic potions, as well as using painting as a recording of life's journeys.Peret and I divorced, and I married Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in me, and gave me the support that allowed me to fully concentrate on my painting.Around 1949 I developed into my mature style, which is considered by many to be instantly recognizable. I often worked in oil on masonite panels, wich I prepared myself. And although my colors have the blended resonance of oil medium, my brushwork often involved many fine strokes of paint laid closely together - a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. In 1956 I had my first one woman exhibition at the Galeria Diana in Mexico City (They had a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1971 and drew the largest audience in the history of the museum). Many of my paintings reflect my early fascination with science and instruments. They embrace my fascination with the workings of the universe and the inner world of fantasy, invention, and dreams. I was also influenced by a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western. I was equaly interested in the ideas and theories of C. G. Jung, G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis, and am fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail as with sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. I see an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness in each of these.
