Early Life
Varo’s father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo, was an intellectual man who had a strong influence on his daughter’s artistic development. Varo would copy the blueprints he brought home from his job in construction and he helped her further develop her technical drawing abilities. He encouraged independent thought and supplemented her education with science and adventure books, notable the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. As she grew older he provided her with text on mysticism and philosophy. Varo’s mother, Ignacia Uranga Bergareche, was born to Basque parents in Argentina. She was a devout Catholic and commended herself to the patron saint of Angles, the Virgin of Los Remedios, promising to name her first daughter after the saint.
The Varo family left Anglès in 1913 when Varo was only 5. Varo spent her childhood experiencing different places and cultures. From Anglès the family moved to Cadiz where he father was appointed the king of Spain’s economic affairs representative in Morocco. The family then moved to Larache, a town in northern Morocco and finally settled in Madrid in 1917. Those first few years of her life left an impression on her that would later show up in motifs like machinery, furnishing, artifacts, and Romanesque and Gothic architecture unique to Anglès.
Varo was given the basic education deemed proper for young ladies of a good upbringing at a convent school - an experience that fostered her rebellious tendencies. Varo took a critical view of religion and rejected the religious ideology of her childhood education and instead clung to the liberal and universalist ideas that her father instilled in her.
Read more about this topic: Remedios Varo
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