What is the secret of one of the most mysterious paintings by Remedios Varo, which set a world record at an auction

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"Harmony" is one of the most mysterious and mysterious works created by Remedios Varo. This work of art is so controversial that many experts are still trying to unravel its secret. And it is not surprising that the painting put up for auction was sold for more than six million dollars, thereby setting a new world record.

Remedios Varo Uranga is one of the world's renowned para-surrealist painters of the 20th century. She was born in 1908 in the small town of Angles in the province of Girona in Spain. Her unique art was the result of upbringing and life struggle, socialization in the world of art and philosophy, as well as part of her amazing imagination.

Her father, Rodrigo Varo, was an intellectual who helped Remedios develop her artistic career from an early age. At a very tender age, Rodrigo helped his daughter develop technical drawing skills. He also encouraged the girl to become an independent thinker. He introduced his daughter to science and fiction, buying her adventure and science books, and also encouraged the early philosophical thinking of the daughter, who was developed beyond her years.

Her mother, Ignatia Uranga, was a devout Catholic and was determined to send her daughter to a monastery school. It was because of this that the future artist developed a critical attitude towards religion and opposed religious ideology. But ultimately Reme embraced universalist and liberal ideals.

As a child, the girl and her family often moved from one place to another: from Cadiz to Larache to Morocco and Madrid. These relocations introduced her to different cultures and expanded her worldview, which was subsequently reflected in her work.

In 1923, while she was studying in Madrid, Reme made her first work of art: she painted herself, as well as her entire family.

In 1924, she became a student at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, graduating with a diploma as a drawing teacher six years later. It was in this academy that she was introduced to surrealism, a cultural movement, and a philosophy that encouraged the capture of the real functionality of human thought without the control of reason and morality. It was during those times that surreal artwork was used to express the philosophical movement.

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she was forced to leave the country and flee to Paris and then to Barcelona. It was in Paris that she was further influenced by the Surrealist movement.

Reme's art was also influenced by her first and second husbands. Her first husband, Gerardo Lizarraga, was a renowned artist, and her second, Benjamin Pere, was a surrealist poet. In Barcelona, where she met her second husband, she was a member of the Logicophobiste art group, thanks to which she managed to curb her imagination and translate it into art. She later returned to Paris but was forced to flee after being arrested during the Nazi occupation of France.

She moved to Mexico in 1941, and it was there that the artist decided to take an unknown and beautiful journey in her imagination.

In the new place, she was inspired by local creators and geniuses such as Diego Rivera, as well as exiles and emigrants, for example, Jean Nicollo and Walter Grün. Grün, an Austrian victim of concentration camps in Europe, was a great inspiration for the future famous artist. He encouraged her to work on her art, and by 1949, Remedios's style had matured. Of her one hundred and forty works of art, one hundred and ten were born in Mexico.

Reme was not only a surrealist, but also an anarchist. She believed that the state is an unnecessary evil that opposes the behavior of human relations. Her philosophical reflections on the state may have been the result of her life experience in Europe. This philosophy is reflected in her isolationist art style.

Feminism was another school of thought that influenced the artist's artistic style. During her time as a surrealist painter, male surrealists did not see their female counterparts as talented. This created an environment in which women artists were isolated. The misunderstood talents of women are reflected in her work in the form of images of sad women in isolated and closed places. This is how she reacted to women's injustice in the art world of the time.

Varo's art style was unique; others described him as unsettling. She captured surprise in her art, as well as unexpected juxtapositions. Her unique surreal style has become a hallmark, because the main heroines of her works were women of the 20th century. She portrayed mysterious lonely and mystical characters involved in scientific activities. This was largely due to the scientific leniency of her father at an early age. Varo used imagination and the concept of magic in her art, as well as androgynous symbols that mimic her physical features, such as large eyes, aquiline nose and heart-shaped faces, are often found in her art and resemble her own facial features.

The art also used autobiographical characters who seemed to be held back by unknown forces. It was a reaction to the marginalization of women in the art world, as it exposed the male surrealist male superiority complex. What is also often found in her work is the use of mythical creatures, alchemy, misty vortexes and utopian vehicles that can pass through land, air and water with sails, gears and transmissions responsive to higher energies. The unusual attitude of her art reflects passivity, contemplation, instability and symbolism. Those who look closely enough at her works can catch and appreciate this amazing imagination.

But, perhaps, one of the most outstanding works of the artist is a painting called "Harmony". This piece shows how the unconscious is critical to the creation of art as well as to the integrity of human consciousness.

The first thing that attracts the viewer's attention is the figure of the androgynous alchemist-composer.

He takes out various objects from the chest: leaves, flowers, shells, transparent geometric shapes and scraps of paper with handwritten mathematical numbers, which he string on a stereoscopic musical score. The expression on the composer's face suggests that he is absent-minded, as if half asleep. This half-asleep state of mind allowed a female figure to emerge from the wallpaper, which, unnoticed by the composer, helps to distribute and adjust objects on the musical score.

In her works, Varo has repeatedly used the motif of a supernatural human figure emerging from the walls to express the surprise of a sudden revelation or breakthrough to omnipresent suppression, for example, in Renaissance, A Visit to the Past, The Appearance of Light and Ancestors (fear).

But in the case of Harmony, the figure from the wall appears with a quiet and graceful air. Closing her eyes, she fills the conscious emptiness of the mind and improves music, which for Varo is a frequent symbol of integrity.

The unconscious is portrayed as the soft work of the mind, which silently works with consciousness and thus completes its integrity.

In Harmony, Reme visualized the many layers of the unconscious and its intersection with consciousness. The composition of the painting begins with the foreground, where the composer sits with a figure in the wall, and then gradually the image moves into the distant depths, where a similar figure in the wall works alone. Then the gaze rushes to the bookshelf in the background, the bed, the windows and the red emptiness outside, and then back to the doorway through which the bird flies, and the floor tiles, pushed apart by fabric and plants.

First, a background figure rising from the wall works on the seemingly interrupted work of the composer, again representing the invisible functioning of the unconscious, as well as Varo's belief in animism, which refers to certain non-human beings, be they animals, plants, or things in question. many societies as having characteristics that traditional Western or Euro-American rationality associates exclusively with human beings, emphasizing the spirituality of all objects in the world, even wallpaper.

Next to the second wall figure is a bookshelf and a bed. Placing a bed over a bookshelf can be seen as a game about the relationship between conscious and unconscious, where civilization and knowledge must support sleep, the most obvious form of the unconscious.

The double skylights, together with the red, curved bed, form the image of the eyes and lips of the face, highlighted in red, which can be interpreted as the unconscious sensuality of the human mind.

On the right side of the room is a door to the outside, filled with a brownish void, the fog of which creeps into the office. The bird, whose grayish-blue color matches the interior of the study, flies away into a brown mist, symbolizing the unconscious. This vivid color contrast between the inner and the outer can be read as the intersection of different levels of consciousness. Gray wallpaper of exploration, representing one level of the unconscious, leads further, to deeper levels, represented by the brown outer area. Another hint of Varo's play at different levels of consciousness and unconsciousness is expressed by a red chair placed in the far right corner of the room, with a nest of birds erupting from his pillow on the back.

Again, there is a clear contrast between reds and grays. A bird's nest on a ripped back cushion instills a whimsical charm. The location of the bird's nest is unexpected and unnatural, since the back of a chair is hardly where the nest is usually seen. But what could be more natural than what the bird finds where it is possible to nest? Often, animals comfortably arrange their dwellings in objects abandoned by people. This particular image is interesting in the sense that it uses the survival instincts of animals as a representation of the inexplicable and inevitable features of the unconscious. The depiction of objects dividing the surfaces of the chair as a challenge to the concept of space is a recurring theme in Varo's work, causing a slight shock in the viewer's mind and prompting him to consider this illusion as a representation of the unconscious, emphasizing its importance in the formation of an integral human consciousness.

Another visualization of the imperceptible existence of the unconscious is the pieces of gray fabric, reminiscent of the one worn by the wall figure, crawling into the office from under the tiles, next to several plant shoots. The image of plant vines and tissues silently invading the space of consciousness can be unnerving and disturbing, because it creates a feeling of invisible and uncontrollable consciousness hanging over the conscious part of the mind. The role of the invading plant parallels the wallpaper symbolizing the unconscious. On the one hand, this is imperceptible for the composer, who is completely focused on his consciousness and remains outside the main focus of the whole picture, and on the other hand, demonstrates his undeniably significant existence, silently captivating space.

Not surprisingly, this enigmatic and truly mystical work of art was recently auctioned for more than $ 6 million, more than its original estimated value of $ 3 million.

In 1963, the art world lost an important talent with the death of Remedios. She died of a heart attack, which many attribute to over-exertion. Despite the death of this great artist, her work is still enjoyed in Mexico and the United States. Although she considers Latin America to be only a temporary haven, this is where her career flourished, and here she breathed her last. After her death, Grün, who was her partner in Mexico, worked to bring her paintings to light. He bought several of her works at auction after her death and donated them to the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City in 1999. A work of art that remained in the Remedios workshop, the Renaissance still life was presented to her mother.

Therefore, it would be fair to say that Remedios's life was an adventure, both in travel and imagination, shared by the whole world through art. Those looking for a closer look are able to understand its lines and symbolism. Despite the fact that she is not here today, Remedios Varo still lives by her art.

About how and how much they are willing to pay for the work they like, read the next article.