THE MYTHOLOGIES OF LEONORA CARRINGTON AND REMEDIOS VARO

par Monique Sebbag

June 23, 2023

APRES conference, given on May 13, 2023 at Halle-Saint-Pierre

Download this illustrated conference in PDF

Introduction

These two artists who had exiled themselves to Mexico were inseparable friends from 1943 to 1963. Their works from this period manifest their great proximity. Indeed, they pursued together a grandiose project, that of uniting reason and imagination, sciences and myths. We recognize there the project of uniting opposites dear to surrealism. Imbued with surrealism, they were attracted to hermeticism. To unite opposites is to reconstitute the whole which is one, according to the Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus, or the original hermaphrodite of the alchemists. Everything conspires there, sympathizes with everything. Our psyche is in its image, it is androgynous and its suffering is great to be out of tune with cosmic harmony. On this subject they assimilated Jung's thought. Carrington and Varo's pictorial project thus approaches the Great Work of philosopher-mages, of alchemical Sacred Art. We could then imagine Leonora and Remedios painting as one prays, with devotion, for they rise spiritually by spiritualizing the materials of their art, by transmuting oil and pigments into revelations, into apparitions.