Remedios Varo: very real fantasies

From July 29 through November 27, 2023, the Art Institute of Chicago presents the exhibition “Remedios Varo: Science Fictions”

Source: Art Institute of Chicago · Image: Remedios Varo. “Armonía” (Harmony), 1956. Collection Eduardo F. Costantini. © 2023 Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid.

This exhibition includes more than 60 paintings and drawings by the Spanish-born, Mexico City-based artist created between 1955 until her death in 1963. While this chapter of Varo’s career measured less than a decade, it represents her grappling with a lifetime of ideas and demonstrates her lasting contribution to modern art and the global legacies of Surrealism. Varo was part of a remarkable community of artists working in Mexico, and while her impact has garnered recognition there, this is the first museum exhibition devoted to Remedios Varo in the United States in more than 20 years.

Born in Spain, Varo (María de los Remedios Alicia y Rodriga Varo y Uranga) fled Europe in 1941 due to the growing dangers of World War II and emigrated permanently to Mexico City, where she worked amid a community of Mexican and European artists including Leonora Carrington, Gunter Gerzso, Kati and Jose Horna, Alice Rahon, and Wolfgang Paalen, who drew inspiration from the culture and geography of Mexico. It was here that Varo developed her unique practice of juxtaposing Surrealist chance-based techniques with imagery from disciplines as wide-ranging as astronomy, ecology, geographic exploration, feminist critique, magic, mysticism, psychology, and tarot. The works assembled for this exhibition come from 10 institutional and private collections in Europe and the Americas and build upon the Art Institute’s longstanding tradition of collecting, exhibiting, and producing new research on Surrealist artworks.

“Remedios Varo was a uniquely powerful artist, who brilliantly wove together two seemingly contradictory impulses of 20th-century painting,” said Caitlin Haskell, the Art Institute’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “On one hand, Varo’s works are rich with passages of material abstraction, and on the other hand she used storytelling to remarkable ends, showing how the creative imagination could have social and political reach. This exhibition provides an opportunity not only to share Varo’s works with new audiences, but also to underscore her vital place in our conception of mid-20th-century art making.”