{"id":1939,"date":"2023-09-11T23:33:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T15:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2023-09-11T23:33:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T15:33:22","slug":"remedios-varos-first-rate-surrealist-storytelling-gets-its-due-in-a-stunning-chicago-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/remedios-varos-first-rate-surrealist-storytelling-gets-its-due-in-a-stunning-chicago-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Remedios Varo\u2019s First-Rate Surrealist Storytelling Gets Its Due in a Stunning Chicago Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of February 20, 1943, a volcano suddenly appeared in a cornfield near the remote village of Par\u00edcutin, Mexico. The field\u2019s owner\u2014a farmer named Dionisio Pulido\u2014later recalled how a crack in the earth widened and swelled, belching sulfurous fumes as the newborn cone thrust skyward. Over the next several months, the volcano continued to grow. Dunes of ash drifted across the land. That June, Par\u00edcutin finally erupted in earnest. Two towns were evacuated and then devoured by molten rock. In one of them, San Juan Parangaricutiro<\/a>, only the church\u2019s bell tower remained standing amid the black lava field.<\/p>\n

Par\u00edcutin became a sensation, particularly among scientists, but also among Mexico\u2019s artists. Many of the country\u2019s Surrealists made pilgrimages to the site. One of those reportedly enchanted by the scene was Remedios Varo, the Spanish painter who\u2019d emigrated to Mexico in 1941. In\u00a0The Flutist\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(1955), Varo includes, in the background, a craggy volcano partly obscured by a tumult of clouds rendered in murky jewel tones\u2014sapphire, jade, topaz. Her roiling sky looks almost oxidized, the effect of decalcomania, a popular Surrealist technique in which material is pressed against wet paint and then quickly pulled away to leave behind a chance texture. The volcano is but one small feature in this richly imagined canvas, but it evokes the mix of nature, science, and something like the magic of the unknown that suffuses all of Varo\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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\"In<\/div>\n<\/div>
Remedios Varo:\u00a0Hacia la torre (Towards the Tower)<\/em>, 1960.<\/span>COURTESY ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In \u201cScience Fictions<\/a>,\u201d the Art Institute of Chicago presents more than 60 of Varo\u2019s paintings and drawings, all made between 1955 and 1963, the year she died of a heart attack at 54. Long revered in Latin America, Varo has entered the canon more slowly in the United States. This is her first exhibition here in more than two decades. Like other female Surrealists, especially her friend and fellow \u00e9migr\u00e9 Leonora Carrington, who shares a similar animism and mystical iconography, Varo\u2019s achievements are still being measured. This show makes an irrefutable case for her technical mastery while also affirming her as a first-rate fabulist whose disparate influences\u2014chivalric romance, medieval architecture, tarot, psychology, astronomy, and much more\u2014cohere into a visionary whole.<\/p>\n

The title of the exhibition alludes to Varo\u2019s connoisseurship of science fiction, evinced by the volumes of Aldous Huxley<\/a> and Ray Bradbury from her personal library that are on view. But the title also suggests the extent to which many of her paintings smudge the boundaries between science and the occult. In\u00a0Creation of the Birds<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(1957), a humanoid owl paints a bird that takes flight off the page, perhaps animated by the starlight refracted through a prism in the owl\u2019s hand. The paint is piped in via metal tubes connected to two nearby biomorphic green orbs, which are themselves fed by thin glass plumbing that zigzags through a portal in the wall.\u00a0Sympathy<\/em>\u00a0(1955) depicts a similar transfer of life force. A figure who, like most of Varo\u2019s characters, appears androgynous sits at a table and strokes an orange cat that\u2019s seemingly in motion, simultaneously hypnotized and convulsed by its owner\u2019s attention. A geometry of finely incised electrical currents crisscrosses the air, emanating from the human\u2019s fingertips and flaming head. Both paintings conjure a moment of alchemy in which people call on wild talents or esoteric knowledge to transform their world.<\/p>\n

Varo was twice a refugee: first from the Spanish Civil War, then again from the Nazi terror in Europe. As if dramatizing this exile, many of her paintings feature subjects in medias res, riding bicycles, as in\u00a0Toward the Tower<\/em>\u00a0(1960), or piloting phantasmagoric wheeled-winged-finned contraptions, as in\u00a0Caravan\u00a0<\/em>(1955),\u00a0Discovery\u00a0<\/em>(1956), or\u00a0Starship\u00a0<\/em>(1960).\u00a0Homo Rodans<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(1959), a sculpture made of fish and poultry bones, purports to be the skeleton of a creature that balanced on a wheel rather than legs. Other works, such as\u00a0Vagabond\u00a0<\/em>(1957), are portraits of rustic dandies who could have just clattered out of some fairytale\u2019s primeval forest. Varo heightens the otherworldliness by giving her vagabond a disproportionate body\u2014his torso is too long, his arm is too low\u2014and by ensconcing him in a sort of wheeled cocoon that doubles as an architectural overcoat and a jury-rigged safehold. He peers out from behind wooden doors that swing open like a cupboard.<\/p>\n

As with many Surrealists, Varo\u2019s images evade description. They seem merely whimsical when summarized, but her technical perfection edges them toward sublimity. In person, her paintings can appear textured, corroded, or exquisitely detailed\u2014sometimes all at once. As an adherent of chance and mysticism, Varo experimented with unconventional methods. She scratched fine lines into her canvases with quartz crystals, and she used\u00a0soufflage<\/em>, the Surrealist trick of blowing wet paint to create random patterns.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Remedios Varo:\u00a0Cazadora de astros (Star Catcher)<\/em>, 1956.<\/span>COURTESY ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Yet, her work is also highly controlled and rehearsed. She began with full-scale sketches on translucent paper, called cartoons, which she then transferred to hardboard by covering the back of the paper with graphite and retracing the image. The exhibition includes several of these preparatory drawings along with their finished versions, offering revelatory before-and-after access to Varo\u2019s artistic practice. Like Par\u00edcutin, Varo\u2019s bewitching visions seemed to erupt from deep down\u2014a psychic outflow that remains a wonder.<\/p>\n

But for all their enigmas, Varo\u2019s paintings have an internal logic and narrative potency. Her storytelling prowess is most ambitiously realized in a suite of three canvases from 1960\u201361. In\u00a0Toward the Tower<\/em><\/a>, a brood of doppelg\u00e4nger blondes in tunics bicycle behind a mother superior figure. The central blonde doesn\u2019t have the chloroformed expression of her sisters, and her coif is unkempt, suggesting she\u2019s not completely brainwashed like the others. In\u00a0Embroidering the Earth\u2019s Mantle<\/em>\u00a0(1961), thesame women occupy a partly open belfry, embroidering vast bolts of cloth that tumble forth from the tower and become the outlying landscape, pictured here in a skewed aerial view of spindly trees, Italianate towers, and seas that defy any horizon. In the last panel,\u00a0The Escape<\/em>\u00a0(1961), our rogue blonde has fled and appears with another figure, perhaps a lover, cruising through a realm of brackish fog and jagged cliffs in a vehicle that resembles a bristly clamshell. The series, hung on the exhibition\u2019s back wall, is a showstopping sequence, whether read as a feminist fantasy or a parable of artistic creation.<\/p>\n

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Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of February 20, 1943, a volcano suddenly appeared in a cornfield near the remote village of Par\u00edcutin, Mexico. The field\u2019s owner\u2014a farmer named Dionisio Pulido\u2014later recalled how a crack in the earth widened and swelled, belching sulfurous fumes as the newborn cone thrust skyward. Over the next several months, the volcano continued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nRemedios Varo\u2019s First-Rate Surrealist Storytelling Gets Its Due in a Stunning Chicago Survey - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the afternoon of February 20, 1943, a volcano suddenly appeared in a cornfield near the remote village of Par\u00edcutin, Mexico.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/remedios-varos-first-rate-surrealist-storytelling-gets-its-due-in-a-stunning-chicago-survey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remedios Varo\u2019s First-Rate Surrealist Storytelling Gets Its Due in a Stunning Chicago Survey - 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