Allegory of Winter

Remedios Varo

In 1941, Remedios Varo arrived in Mexico. She had lived in Paris since 1937, an active member of the Surrealist circle participating in the group’s various gatherings and exhibitions, but World War II saw many artists flee the city and seek safety elsewhere. During this time, Varo painted Alegoría del invierno (“Allegory of Winter”, 1948), a work combining various artistic methods - transfers, grattage, fumage, and the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) - to bridge the subconscious and the real.

Allegory of Winter is an example of Varo’s various influences and interests coming to the fore. An artist who never liked to restrict or limit herself or her interests, Varo is often described as a ‘Para-Surrealist’ because of her unique ability to align the natural world with the scientific, the Surreal and the esoteric. The daughter of a hydraulics engineer, Varo was knowledgeable and educated in scientific apparatus and machines and had a personal interest in physics, all of which crept into her artwork. As Lois Zamora wrote in ‘The Magical Tables of Isabel Allende and Remedios Varo’, “Varo’s idiosyncratic iconography includes fantastical machines that facilitate metaphysical voyages to other shores, other worlds.”

Here, the result is lonely, dreamy, and glacial. It’s delicate and spiky, highlighting how nature can be both. Barren trees and glacier orbs contain - or maybe house? - frozen flowers and birds, their various pods creating a twisty, turny, geometric pattern. Or maybe they are not frozen, merely suspended in time. Allegory of Winter is nature at its most structured and metaphysical, and ‘for Varo, its progress imposes a sort of order, rhythm, and harmony on the cosmos.’¹

1. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/alegoria-invierno-allegory-winter