Summer by Remedios Varo

Welcome Summer!

Remedios Varo was a Spanish surrealist painter. She is known as one of the world famous para-surrealist artists of 20^th century. Her paintings were inspired by Renaissance art and Philosophy.

Renaissance Influence:

The harmony, total nuances, unity and the narrative structure. It’s well known that she was a regular visitant at Prado Museum when she was living in Madrid. By that time, she was very interested in the work of Hieronymus Bosch, specially The Garden of Earthly Delights. The allegorical nature of many of her paintings recalls Bosch work.

Philosophical Influence:

She considered the surrealism as “a way to communicate the incommunicable”.

Despite she was critical of her childhood religion, Catholicism, her work was influenced by religion. This is what differed her from other surrealists.  She was also influenced by a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions from Western and Eastern (Carl Jung, Helena Blavatsky, the Sufis to quote some of her interests).

Curiosities:

• Despite the Surrealist movement tendency to degrade women, some of Varo’s paintings elevated woman image. But she didn’t intend to use her art to deal with problems in gender inequality.

References:

• Remedios Varo website
• Wikipedia (English and Spanish)