Washington, D.C. -- The Magic of Remedios Varo, the first retrospective in the U.S. to showcase the powerful imagination and intellectual curiosity of one of Mexico’s greatest women artists, will be presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts from February 10 to May 29, 2000. The exhibition includes 77 of Varo’s finest paintings and drawings from collections in Mexico and the U.S. Varo (1908-1963) used her superior technical skill to create richly detailed surrealist works filled with science, magic, and women’s experience. She explored the world through her work while also inventing alternatives to it.

The exhibition is made possible by major support from Sears, Roebuck and Co. E. Ronald Culp, senior vice president, public relations and communications/government affairs, said, "This extraordinary exhibition will educate and entertain everyone from sophisticated art enthusiasts to families exploring art together for the first time. Sears is proud to share Varo’s unparalleled vision and creativity with U.S. audiences."

From her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1956, Varo was an instant celebrity, with crowds lining up to see her work and long waiting lists for commissions. In her meticulous paintings rendered in jewel-like tones, worlds overlap to create a reality apart: a chair back mysteriously opens to reveal human faces, hands reach through walls, and tabletops peel back to expose living roots. Varo wanted to know how and why the universe functioned, and looked to dreams, astrology, and science for inspiration, and to visual and literary sources for themes. She set up hypotheses and explored them in paint, opening the door to new ways of envisioning nature and the self.

Most of the people who inhabit Varo’s paintings reflect the artist’s features, the heart-shaped face with large almond eyes, long sharp nose, and thick hair. In many of Varo’s works a female character employs alchemical methods, as in Creation of the Birds (1957), in which an owl artist/musician uses synthesized materials to create a bird that takes flight out of a window. And though Surrealism was the aesthetic within which she developed, her later work creates an alternate vision of the movement. In Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst (1960), the traditional Oedipal drama is reversed as a daughter drops the head of her father in a psychological rite of passage. Varo also built a world based on women’s domestic activities as a vehicle through which to explore creativity and the fantastic. In Celestial Pablum (1958), a woman seated in a tower floating among the clouds grinds star matter into a pablum that she feeds to a crescent moon in a cage, thereby gaining access to celestial realms.

Varo grew up in Madrid, and was encouraged by her father, an engineer, to pursue the artistic talent that she exhibited as a young girl. She became one of the first women to enroll as a full-time student at the Academia de San Fernando in 1924. In 1932 she moved to Barcelona, where she entered the social circle of avant-garde artists. Supporting herself with commercial artwork, she also created her own work that wedded science, architecture, and fantasy. Five years later Varo moved to Paris with Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, who later became her husband, and over the next few years she began to exhibit her work in Surrealist exhibitions. In 1940, Varo was imprisoned by the Germans, possibly for having hidden a deserter from the French army. At the end of 1941 she and Péret fled to Mexico, where she became an integral part of a group of exiled artists. In 1947, Varo and Péret parted and she joined a French scientific expedition to Venezuela, where she remained for six months and continued her commercial art work. She returned to Mexico in 1949, and in 1952 married Walter Gruen, an Austrian political refugee, and devoted herself to painting. Varo suffered a fatal heart attack in 1963, at the age of 55, leaving a legacy of mature paintings produced in the short span of just over 10 years.

The Magic of Remedios Varo is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). The curator is Luis-Martín Lozano, a scholar on Mexican art who recently curated an exhibition on Diego Rivera at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Coordinating curator for the museum is Chief Curator Susan Fisher Sterling. To accompany the exhibition NMWA will publish a fully illustrated catalogue with a bilingual essay by Lozano, along with a biography, bibliography, and exhibition checklist. It will be available in the spring in the museum shop and by mail order (call 1.800.222.7270). Following its debut in Washington, the exhibition will be on display at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, from June 16 to August 20, 2000.

In addition to Sears, Roebuck and Co., support for the exhibition is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts; the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes; the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; the Embassy of Mexico, Washington, D.C.; the Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington, D.C.; and the members of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Transportation for the exhibition is provided by Aeroméxico.

The installation Bending the Rules, on view during the exhibition, will explore how Varo blended her depictions of natural phenomena with magical and supernatural elements. It will feature photo murals of Varo’s paintings accompanied by text. Special sessions for science classes and other school groups are available; call 202.783.7372 for information.

A Fiesta Mexicana on February 19 will highlight the colorful traditions of Mexican art and culture. Activities at the family festival will include dancing by the Maru Montero Dance Company with audience participation; creating yarn paintings, clay designs, and other crafts; sampling Mexican hot chocolate and tortillas; and hearing traditional folktales. A symposium examining the art of Remedios Varo in the context of Surrealism, Mexico, and other artists in exile will be presented at NMWA and the Mexican Cultural Institute on March 31 and April 1. A series of films by women directors from Mexico begins in February. Call 202.783.7370 for further information about programs and prices. All programs are cosponsored with the Mexican Cultural Institute.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts, founded in 1981 and opened in 1987, is the only museum dedicated solely to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Its permanent collection contains approximately 2600 works by almost 700 artists, including Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Catlett, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Louise Bourgeois. The museum also conducts multidisciplinary programs for diverse audiences, maintains a Library and Research Center, publishes a quarterly magazine, and has 22 state committees. Since 1984 nearly 200,000 people have joined as members in support of the museum and its mission. The Women’s Museum is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., in a historic building near the White House. It is open Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon - 5 p.m. A donation of $3 for adults and $2 for students and seniors is suggested. For information call 202.783.5000 or visit the museum’s website, www.nmwa.org.

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