ExhibitionSeptember 18, 2023
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions—the first museum exhibition dedicated to the artist in the United States since 2000—brings together more than 20 paintings Varo created in Mexico from 1955 until she died in 1963. Additional materials from the artist’s archive—large-scale cartoons for paintings, notebooks, sketches, detailed studies, ephemera, and personal possessions—offer an even deeper understanding of her distinct and diverse practice. The exhibition’s subtitle, Science Fictions, alludes to the tensions and possibilities Varo brought together in her work as she searched to visualize hidden orders and unseen truths.
The exhibition builds upon the Art Institute’s 90-year tradition of collecting, exhibiting, and producing new research on Surrealist artworks. It marks a significant milestone in the museum’s efforts to expand the borders of this global movement. Notably, this will be the Art Institute’s first solo exhibition dedicated to a woman Surrealist painter and a woman artist working in Mexico.
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and is curated by Caitlin Haskell, the Art Institute’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and guest curator Tere Arcq.
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, and it was there that Varo came into her own as an artist, giving up technical illustration and advertising work to dedicate herself fully to painting and drawing. In Mexico, she worked amid a community of Mexican and European artists who drew inspiration from the culture and geography of Mexico. Here, Varo developed her unique practice of juxtaposing Surrealist chance-based techniques with imagery from disciplines as wide-ranging as chivalric romance, ecology, geographic explorations, feminist critique, mysticism, psychology, and tarot.
For more information, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZx9aswvpPk
The exhibition builds upon the Art Institute’s 90-year tradition of collecting, exhibiting, and producing new research on Surrealist artworks. It marks a significant milestone in the museum’s efforts to expand the borders of this global movement. Notably, this will be the Art Institute’s first solo exhibition dedicated to a woman Surrealist painter and a woman artist working in Mexico.
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and is curated by Caitlin Haskell, the Art Institute’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and guest curator Tere Arcq.
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, and it was there that Varo came into her own as an artist, giving up technical illustration and advertising work to dedicate herself fully to painting and drawing. In Mexico, she worked amid a community of Mexican and European artists who drew inspiration from the culture and geography of Mexico. Here, Varo developed her unique practice of juxtaposing Surrealist chance-based techniques with imagery from disciplines as wide-ranging as chivalric romance, ecology, geographic explorations, feminist critique, mysticism, psychology, and tarot.
For more information, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZx9aswvpPk
Gallery
