“Discovery” — archetypal surrealism in Varo’s inimitable style.

Photographed at the AIC, 2024:

Remedios Varo (Spanish, active Mexico, 1908-1963)

Discovery (Hallazgo), 1956

Oil on hardboard

Fleeing the Spanish Civil War and World War II, Remedios Varo left Europe in 1941 for Mexico City. There she joined a community of European and Mexican artists and began making "mystical works" that, as she put it, "do not correspond to the logical order." Varo's artworks combine two distinct realms of mysteries: one in her wide-ranging, evocative subject matter and another in a technique that resists narration. Her singular method of painting involved pressing, scratching, and texturing gesso to craft fantastical scenes. In Discovery (Hallazgo), she portrayed sailors embarking on a quest to attain a higher spiritual level. The culmination of their journey is marked by the titular discovery of a luminous sphere in the distant grove, symbolizing, as Varo described it, "inner-oneness".