Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington

Remedios Varo, ‘The Juggler’, courtesy MOMA, New York

The Spanish painter Remedios Varo was a member of the creative community that embraced Surrealism in Mexico City during and after World War II. Like other artists who moved to Mexico at that time, Varo left Europe as war spread across the continent, and in her new home she slowly developed a reputation and some professional success, based on her pictures of dreamlike scenes that were filled with themes drawn from science, alchemy, music and the occult. A sophisticated, quirky, and accomplished painter, Varo was guided by her interest in off-beat religion and spirituality: she repeated incantations while mixing oil paints, used crystals as energy sources, and explored invisible connections between the earthly plane and the beyond. The many symbols in her work were carefully placed and meaningful.

Varo became a close friend of fellow artist Leonora Carrington, who also settled in Mexico during the war, after living for a year or so in New York, and of the photographer Kati Horna, who had emigrated from Europe. They became known in art circles as ‘the three witches’ because of their interest in supernatural rituals, tarot readings, metaphysical studies (especially the teachings of Gurdjieff), and indigenous spiritual practices, which involved the use of shamanic psychedelics, as well as of herbal concoctions that were purchased in local markets. Varo and Carrington spent a great deal of time together; they painted separately, with different styles and techniques, but their shared interests are evident; they both depicted magical, alternate realities that drew on aspects of mainstream Surrealism and yet were resolutely individual. Companionship and social activity seemed to nurture their creativity; Bohemian parties and gatherings, which frequently involved games, practical jokes, costumes, and story-telling, often went on well into the night. Carrington and Varo always made room in their homes for vivid, and sometimes boisterous, flights of fantasy and imagination, but amid all the fun and tequila serious work was achieved. The behaviour of the ‘witches’ was just as outré as that of Dalí, André Breton and Max Ernst, but while the extravagant lives of the Surrealist men in Paris attracted a great deal of attention, those of the Surrealist women in Mexico passed largely unremarked.

As European women, the artists enjoyed both privileged and marginal status, and they made full use of the consequent freedom. Varo and Carrington, in particular, encouraged each other in daring and outrage; Varo, for instance, would write letters to strangers - psychiatrists and other people chosen at random from the telephone book - sometimes inviting them to dinner parties at which unconventional dishes were served. The two friends enjoyed creating ‘Surreal’ food, which might include an omelette made with human hair, or tapioca dyed with squid ink that passed as caviar, which they shared with unsuspecting guests. There was doubtless an ironic or humorous aspect to the pseudo-scientific investigations they conducted in the kitchen, as well as to the fanciful connections they forged between food preparation, magic, and painting, but they were at least partly serious. Carrington likened the cooking and consumption of food to the alchemical process of distillation and transformation, but this should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. In a letter to Edward James, the celebrated Surrealist fellow-traveler and collector, she remarked that ‘Inspired painting, I find, favours a rather bucolic and opaque frame of mind on a continually replenished stomach - preferably with heavy and indigestible foods such as chocolate, sickly cakes, marzipan in blocks…That is why I painted so beautifully when I was pregnant. I did nothing but eat’.

For further exploration:

Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrngton, and Kati Horna: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/leonora-carrington-7615/love-friendship-rivalry-surreal-friends

Remedios Varo: https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9935/remedios-varo-science-fictions

Leonora Carrington: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/jul/12/leonora-carrington-rebel-visionary-review-wild-dreams-of-a-titan-of-surrealism-finally-get-their-due

Edward James: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/edward-james-surrealism-patron-salvador-dali/

Image on index page: detail of ‘Creation of the Birds’ by Remedios Varo, courtesy Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

Leonora Carrington, ‘And Then We Saw The Daughter Of The Minotaur’, courtesy MOMA, New York