“Armonía (Autorretrato Sugerente)”/“Harmony (Suggestive Self-Portrait)” 1956. Credit… Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VEGAP, Madrid, New York; Sotheby’s, via Associated Press.

Her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zejalvo, a hydraulic engineer, taught her mechanical drawing and encouraged her interest in art and science… Varo was interested in proportion and scale, as her father had been, and she would draft preliminary sketches carefully. It sometimes took her months to complete a single small painting.

“Microcosmos (Determinismo),” 1959.Credit…Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VEGAP, Madrid, New York; Sotheby’s, via Associated Press.

Varo participated in consciousness-raising workshops based on the teachings of Gurdjieff… Workshop participants might concentrate for six straight hours on an inanimate object, like a wooden chair, focusing on the life that had existed within the object… The wood in the chair, for example, had come from a tree, and the tree had once been alive.

(Julia Bozzone, “Overlooked No More: Remedios Varo, Spanish Painter of Magic, Mysticism and Science,” NYTimes, 9-24-21)

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