"In the Art Institute’s “Science Fictions” exhibition, Varo’s work casts the traditionally male alchemist as female in “Ciencia inútil, o El Alquimista” (“Useless Science, or The Alchemist”), her lone figure distilling a cloud of vapor on a checkerboard floor that twists into her cloak. A clue to the alchemist’s experimentations lies within the piece’s color palette, as the exhibition’s catalog points out: Black, white, yellow and red reference the four-staged chemical reaction fabled to take place in creating the immortality-granting elixir of life."
"Alchemy and the depths of the occult manifest within Remedios Varo’s practice. The Spanish surrealist (1908-1963), whose works are on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, was a researcher at heart with a vast, insatiable curiosity for discovering the unseen and underrecognized. Interested in scientific disciplines like astronomy and ecology along with psychology, tarot, and feminism, Varo was intent on expanding the limits of human perception. “I deliberately set out to make a mystical work, in the sense of revealing a mystery, or better, of expressing it through ways that do not always correspond to the logical order, but to an intuitive, divinatory, and irrational order,” she’s quoted as saying."
"Varo broke away from the Surrealist movement and created a corpus of mystical and alchemical art that stresses a personal, inner quest for spiritual truth over hierarchal dogmatic truth (whether that is of the Church or the Surrealists."
Another excellent article here about the 'three witches':
"In their adoptive Mexico, Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna and Remedios Varo quickly formed a lifelong, almost familial connection thanks to their shared Surrealist proclivities and fascination with the occult arts – leading to the trio earning the nickname ‘the three witches’ among their coterie. Now that a long-overdue survey of the lattermost artist has hit the Art Institute of Chicago, there’s no better time to brush up on the mutual influence of these weird sisters."
Transforming the Witch: Feminist Mysticism in the Works of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington
Both Varo and Carrington sought to bring the esoteric and the mystical into their artistic practice, blending surrealism with themes of spirituality and the occult. Their work often centered on the inner world of women, exploring transformation, magic, and the subconscious. By challenging traditional gender roles and embracing a deeply personal, intuitive approach to creation, they forged a unique space within the surrealist movement, one that resonated with a broader feminist mysticism than the stereotypical depictions we know.
