Remedios Varo

María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga (known as Remei or Remedios Varo, 16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963) was a Catalan surrealist painter who lived in several European cities before being exiled in Mexico.

Early life and education

María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was born on 16 December 1908 in Anglès, a small town in the province of Girona, in Catalonia. Remedios was named in honor of the Virgen de los Remedios ("Virgin of Remedies") as a 'remedy' for an older sister's death. She had two surviving siblings: an older brother Rodrigo, and a younger brother Luis. Her mother, Ignacia Uranga y Bergareche, was born in Argentina to Basque parents and her father, Rodrigo Varo y Zajalvo, was from Córdoba in Andalusia.

When Varo was a young child, her family moved frequently throughout Spain and North Africa to follow her father's work as a hydraulic engineer. While her father was a somewhat agnostic liberal who studied Esperanto, her mother was a devout Catholic and enrolled her in a strict convent school at the age of eight. Varo's father encouraged her artistic endeavors, taking her to museums and having her meticulously copy his diagrams. While in school, Varo was somewhat rebellious. She read authors such as Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as mystical literature and Eastern spiritual works. As a teenager she became interested in dreams, writing stories which developed fantastical themes she would later explore in her art.