Surrealism, Gender and City in the Pictorial and Poetic Work of Remedios Varo

Abstract

According to Roger Caillois (1969), Octavio Paz (1969) and Eugenio F. Granell (1989), the pictorial work of Remedios Varo is full of liminal spaces (both literal and metaphorical) that represent cosmic plenitude. In these spaces, relatively faithful to the principles of the second Surrealist manifesto (1930) and linked by a mutual seduction or by a simple unavoidable continuity, one can perceive a transition between the natural and the urban as well as a particular way of appreciating the city. Liminality in Varo’s paintings and poems respond to a necessity of creating a new space for the feminine subject, a non-conformist space that breaks with the traditional opposition object/subject to present a fluctuating and multivalent entity. It is in this way that the marvellous leads to the heterotopic. In short, the continuum of object/subject in Varo’s work encapsulates an unconventional image of the urban.