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On Homo rodans and Other Writings
An updated, expanded edition of Remedios Varo’s translated writings, including pieces never before published in any language
With the 2018 publication of Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, Wakefield Press introduced the writings of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo into English for the first time. These texts, never published during her lifetime, present something of a missing chapter, and offer the same qualities to be found in her visual work: an engagement with mysticism and magic, a breakdown of the border between the everyday and the marvelous, a love of mischief and an ongoing meditation on escape in all its forms. This new, expanded volume brings together the painter’s collected writings, an unpublished interview, letters to friends and acquaintances, dream accounts, notes for unrealized projects, a project for a theater piece, whimsical recipes for controlled dreaming, exercises in Surrealist automatic writing and prose-poem commentaries on her paintings. It also includes her longest manuscript, the pseudoscientific "On Homo rodans": an absurdist study of the wheeled predecessor to Homo sapiens (the skeleton of which Varo had built out of chicken bones). Written by the invented anthropologist Hälikcio von Fuhrängschmidt, the essay utilizes eccentric Latin and a tongue-in-cheek pompous discourse to explain the origins of the first umbrella and in what ways “Myths” are merely “corrupted Myrtles.” Also included are newly discovered writings, including three short stories, never before published in any language.
Remedios Varo (1908–63) was a Surrealist painter who worked in Spain, France and Mexico. Her paintings were influenced by Old Masters such as Bosch and El Greco, as well as Jungian philosophy and occult writings. While living in Mexico she became close friends with fellow Surrealist Leonora Carrington.
With the 2018 publication of Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, Wakefield Press introduced the writings of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo into English for the first time. These texts, never published during her lifetime, present something of a missing chapter, and offer the same qualities to be found in her visual work: an engagement with mysticism and magic, a breakdown of the border between the everyday and the marvelous, a love of mischief and an ongoing meditation on escape in all its forms. This new, expanded volume brings together the painter’s collected writings, an unpublished interview, letters to friends and acquaintances, dream accounts, notes for unrealized projects, a project for a theater piece, whimsical recipes for controlled dreaming, exercises in Surrealist automatic writing and prose-poem commentaries on her paintings. It also includes her longest manuscript, the pseudoscientific "On Homo rodans": an absurdist study of the wheeled predecessor to Homo sapiens (the skeleton of which Varo had built out of chicken bones). Written by the invented anthropologist Hälikcio von Fuhrängschmidt, the essay utilizes eccentric Latin and a tongue-in-cheek pompous discourse to explain the origins of the first umbrella and in what ways “Myths” are merely “corrupted Myrtles.” Also included are newly discovered writings, including three short stories, never before published in any language.
Remedios Varo (1908–63) was a Surrealist painter who worked in Spain, France and Mexico. Her paintings were influenced by Old Masters such as Bosch and El Greco, as well as Jungian philosophy and occult writings. While living in Mexico she became close friends with fellow Surrealist Leonora Carrington.
- GenresArt
160 pages, Paperback
Published June 11, 2024
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About the author
Remedios Varo
17 books59 followersRemedios Varo Uranga (December 16, 1908 - October 8, 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her second husband (the first was Gerardo Lizarraga, a painter), the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret in Barcelona. There she was a member of the art group Logicophobiste. They were introduced through a mutual friendship with the Surrealist artist Oscar Dominguez.
In 1937, she moved to Paris with Péret, sealing herself from any return to Franco's Spain since she had republican ties. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She initially considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life.
In Mexico, she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. Her third, and last, marriage was to Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and he gave her the support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.
After 1949 Varo developed her mature style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on masonite panels she prepared herself. Although her colors have the blended resonance of the oil medium, her brushwork often involved many fine strokes of paint laid closely together - a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. She died at the height of her career from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963.
Her work continues to achieve successful retrospectives at major sites in Mexico and the United States.
In 1937, she moved to Paris with Péret, sealing herself from any return to Franco's Spain since she had republican ties. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She initially considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life.
In Mexico, she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. Her third, and last, marriage was to Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and he gave her the support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.
After 1949 Varo developed her mature style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on masonite panels she prepared herself. Although her colors have the blended resonance of the oil medium, her brushwork often involved many fine strokes of paint laid closely together - a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. She died at the height of her career from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963.
Her work continues to achieve successful retrospectives at major sites in Mexico and the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2025
visions! images! sights! eyes supreme!
March 27, 2025
Read if you enjoy sheep and doves and staircases, and if you believe them analogous
June 3, 2024
"Allah is Allah and Mohammad is his prophet.
However..."
However..."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews