Remedios Varo’s work has always been on the edges of recognition. Less celebrated than her surrealist peers, her solo shows have been sporadic, and mostly in her adopted home of Mexico. But the edges — of the visible, the real, the tangible — are where she thrives. A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings is a small exhibition, comprised of just a dozen drawings and two paintings, organized by Gallery Wendi Norris and hosted by Adler Beatty, but it allows an illuminating glimpse into her practice.
Varo’s paintings are exquisitely strange, and it’s wonderful to be able to witness the meticulousness with which she composed them. Her engineer father taught her to draw, and the influence is obvious. Immaculate geometry and architectural precision serve as the foundation for her fantastical scenes, and allow the bizarreness of her characters to stand out. These drawings crack the cold flawlessness of her paintings, and it’s exciting to see the looser, simpler skeletons underneath the surface.
Varo’s architectural forms are plotted to perfection, and the studies for “El Flautista” (1955) and “Armonia” (1956) show her breaking the image into sections to lay out drapery and furniture. Her figures, though pushed beyond the natural and into the uncanny, nevertheless have an expressiveness that suggests humanity. In a sketch for “Luz Emergente” (1962), she renders a mask-like face in just a few lines. These are alluring, intimate images, the bones of her style laid bare.
The exhibition does include two paintings, though neither one is accompanied by preparatory drawings. “Ruptura” (1955) portrays a cloaked figure descending a staircase, and features Varo’s distinctive wide-eyed, avian faces in a dreamy, claustrophobic setting. Executed in oil on Masonite board, her preferred media, the paint has a remarkable luminosity enhanced by details that appear scratched into the surface; the added texture sharpens the artist’s painstaking line work. It’s shown alongside “Apártalos que voy de Paso.” In the latter, she’s allowed the surface of the cardboard to peek through wispy layers of gouache, so that the figure appears to be made of mist.
Varo’s skill as a painter clearly begins with her draftsmanship. Her mastery of such delicate lines, and the precision of light and shadow that characterizes her work, are all here in her drawings. It’s a shame, then, to not see the finished works alongside the sketches — though they are reproduced on the list of works and catalogs of her paintings are laid out in the space. Only one drawing in the show isn’t a preparatory work for a painting, the charmingly weird pencil on paper “Personaje alado” (1959), a sort of fox-wasp-human chimera, with ragged leaves for wings. An alcove sits in the figure’s chest, with a hallway receding toward a closed door. There’s always something just out of frame, beyond what we’re permitted to see, in Varo’s work, but these studies are a tantalizing display of her skill and vision.
A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings continues at Adler Beatty (34 E 69th Street, Fourth Floor, Lenox Hill, Manhattan) through June 1. The exhibition was organized by Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.