Remedios Varo - Career Beginnings

Career Beginnings

After spending a year in Paris, Varo moved to Barcelona and formed her first artistic circle of friends, which included Josep-Lluis Florit, Oscar Dominguez and Esteban Frances. Varo soon separated from her husband and shared a studio with Frances in a neighborhood filled with young avant-garde artists. The summer of 1935 marked Varo’s formal invitation into Surrealism when French surrealist Marcel Jean arrived in Barcelona. That same year along with Jean and his artist friends, Dominguez and Frances, Varo created a surrealist game that was meant to explore the subconscious association of participants by pairing different images at random. These associations were called cadavres exquis, meaning exquisite corpses, and perfectly illustrated the principle Andre Breton wrote in his Surrealist manifestos. Varo soon joined a collective of artists and writers, called the Logicofobistas, who had an interest in Surrealism and wanted to unite art together with metaphysics while resisting logic and reason. Varo exhibited with this group in 1936 at the Galeria Catalonia although she recognized they were not pure Surrealists.

When the Spanish Civil War began the French Surrealist poet, Benjamin Peret, came to Barcelona to support the anti-Franco cause and met Varo. It was the beginning of an intensely romantic relationship that was recorded in the many letters declaring his love and publications dedicated to Varo. In 1937, Peret moved back to France and Varo followed.