Cinco llaves del mundo secreto de Remedios Varo. (Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo)

Edward A. Riedinger, Ohio State Univ. Lib., Columbus -- Críticas, 11/1/2008

Arcq, Tere, et al.
Mexico: Artes de México. 2008. 216 p. ISBN 978-9706-83-33-58. $59.95. FINE ARTS

This richly illustrated work offers a panoramic guide to Spanish-born Mexican Surrealist painter Remedios Varo (1908–63). The contributions by eight art critics and historians, compiled for the centenary of her birth, provide a thematic analysis of her enigmatic, magically detailed universe. The keys unlocking Varo’s world of delicate, bemused fantasy-realism turn on understanding its themes of the esoteric, Surrealist, dreamlike, literary, and architectural. The origins of the Varo universe emerge from the influence of her father’s precise draughtmanship as a hydraulic engineer; an upbringing of Catholic piety engraved within a Hieronymus Bosch landscape of medieval miniatures; the elongated Mannerist perspective, seen in El Greco; and her Surrealist companions in Paris and Barcelona, notably Salvador Dalí, and in Mexico City, including Frida Kahlo. Numerous full-page illustrations allow a more textured feel for Varo’s sinuous work, foregrounding it against work by her better-known contemporaries. With ample, detailed color reproductions, this book complements Janet Kaplan’s 2000 biography and the 1999 catalogue raisonné edited by her last husband, Walter Gruen. Timely, useful, and attractive, this volume is recommended for academic and public libraries, especially those with collections on fine arts, women artists, and Hispanic/Latin American studies.

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