Remedios Varo: The Painter of Magic | Louisiana Channel

We asked three artists and two writers to tell us about their inspiration from the Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963) and her surrealist universe, where precision and magic intersect. ”She was a brave woman. She gave me energy. She permitted me to be wild. She allowed me to be wild because before I was wild, she was wild,” says the acclaimed Cuban artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Chilean-Peruvian painter Alejandro Cardenas, who is based in Madrid, agrees: “She obviously just got better and better. She is one of those artists that I feel like, if you look at her stuff chronologically, just get more specific, more detailed, more concrete, even though they also, weirdly, get more magical.” Dream worlds and scientific exploration merge with magical thinking in Remedios Varo's fascinating, surreal imagery. With a unique blend of precision and poetry, the Spanish-Mexican artist conjured a universe of fantastical interiors and imaginary landscapes inhabited by mysterious musicians, eccentric scientists, and enigmatic travelers. Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora states: ”How I think Remedios Varo was as a person? I'm sure that she didn't divide her dreams from life. I have heard that she was very social. She had a lot of friends, and she was very connected with poets, with writers, with musicians, with dancers, and artists. But I'm sure she was very quiet and lonely at work. I can imagine her spending hours and days painting, drawing, thinking, or reading. I'm sure that she was spending a lot of time in nature, and I'm sure that she was also connected with science, her books, her library, her archive.” Remedios Varo, who declared that “the dream world and the real world are the same,” attempted to combine vastly different techniques, ideas, and fantasies in an almost alchemical manner in her paintings, which have an enigmatic, cinematic character often incorporating hybrid creatures. She used the random processes of surrealism, yet was at the same time incredibly precise, meticulous, and classical in her painterly expression and color approach, which has clear connections to Italian painting from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. ”A lot of surrealists will work with making clashes, like putting two very different objects together to make a third object, like a fish on a bicycle. And Varo is not interested in that at all,” says Danish writer Olga Ravn. Varo’s sources of inspiration, therefore, range from, for example, Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne, and Niels Bohr to the Armenian philosopher and occult teacher Gurdjieff. She was also a feminist and formulated her own surrealist idiom, which is based on a feminine world of experience and ideas about female creativity and empowerment. Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin, who is regarded among the best writers in the Spanish language, sums up: ”Her work is not about something to say. It was like a very, very, very long, open question." María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga (1908-1963) was born in northern Spain and grew up in a household with a staunch Catholic mother and a free-spirited father, a hydraulic engineer. It was he who taught her to draw and supported her desire to become an artist. It was not until 1949 that she was able to seriously engage in painting, and a few years later, her marriage to the Austrian emigrant Walter Gruen meant she no longer had to worry about finances. Her closest friends – and collaborators – became the British artist Leonora Carrington and the Hungarian photojournalist Kati Horna. They were so close that they were referred to as “the three witches.” Remedios Varo achieved enormous success with her paintings, but since each one took a long time to make, her output was limited, and people had to join a waiting list for her works. She died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of only 54. André Breton, who is considered the spiritual father figure of surrealism, paid tribute to her with the words: “The sorceress has left us too soon.” Olga Ravn and Samanta Schweblin were interviewed by Nanna Dahm. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Alejandro Cardenas, and Gabriel de la Mora were interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner. All conversations took place between June and August 2026. Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan (Alejandro Cardenas & Olga Ravn), Odette Peralta (Gabriel de la Mora), Olivia Newport (Samanta Schweblin), Sean Hanley (Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons) Edit: Nanna Dahm & Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan Produced by: Nanna Dahm & Marc-Christoph Wagner Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026 Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond. Subscribe to our channel for more videos on art:    / thelouisianachannel   SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER: https://channel.louisiana.dk/newsletter FOLLOW US HERE: Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk Instagram:   / louisianachannel   Facebook:   / louisianachannel