Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo Uranga (16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican para-surrealist painter and anarchist.
Born in Girona, Spain in 1908, she studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. She is known as one of the world famous para-surrealist artists of the 20th Century.[During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her second husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. She was forced into exile from Paris during the German occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She died in 1963, at the height of her career, from a heart attack, in Mexico City.

As a young woman Varo had no doubts that she was meant to be an artist. After spending a year in Paris, Varo moved to Barcelona and formed her first artistic circle of friends, which included Josep-Lluis Florit, Óscar Domínguez, and Esteban Francés. Varo soon separated from her husband and shared a studio with Francés, in a neighborhood filled with young avant-garde artists. The summer of 1935 marked Varo’s formal invitation into Surrealism when French surrealist Marcel Jean (fr) arrived in Barcelona. That same year, along with Jean and his artist friends, Dominguez and Francés, Varo created a surrealist game that was meant to explore the subconscious association of participants by pairing different images at random. These associations were called cadavres exquis, meaning exquisite corpses, and perfectly illustrated the principle André Breton wrote in his Surrealist manifestos. Varo soon joined a collective of artists and writers, called the Logicophobists, who had an interest in Surrealism and wanted to unite art together with metaphysics, while resisting logic and reason. Varo exhibited with this group in 1936 at the Galería Catalonia although she recognized they were not pure Surrealists.
When the Spanish Civil War began, the French Surrealist poet, Benjamin Peret, came to Barcelona to support the anti-Franco cause and met Varo. It was the beginning of an intensely romantic relationship that was recorded in the many letters declaring his love and publications dedicated to Varo. In 1937, Peret moved back to France, and Varo followed. It was in Paris where Varo was greatly influenced by the Surrealist Movement.
Only after her death was it discovered that Varo had never divorced her first husband Lizarraga.Due to her Republican ties, her 1937 move to Paris with Péret ensured that she would never be able to return to Franco's Spain.Before her move to Mexico in 1941, Varo was arrested in Paris due to Nazi occupation of France

Renaissance art inspired harmony, tonal nuances, unity, and narrative structure in Varo’s paintings. The allegorical nature of much of Varo's work especially recalls the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, and some critics, such as Dean Swinford, have described her art as "postmodern allegory," much in the tradition of Irrealism.
Varo was greatly influenced by her first and second husband, Gerardo Lizarraga and Benjamin Peret. Her first husband was a well-respected painter and her second husband was a surrealist poet.Varo was also influenced by styles as diverse as those of Francisco Goya, El Greco, Picasso, and Braque. While André Breton was a formative influence in her understanding of Surrealism, some of her paintings bear an uncanny resemblance to the Surrealist creations of the modern Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico.While there is little overt influence of Mexican art on her work, Varo and the other surrealists were captivated by the seemingly porous borders between the marvelous and the real in Mexico.Varo's painting The Lovers served as inspiration for some of the images used by Madonna in the music video for her 1995 single "Bedtime Story"

She considered surrealism as an "expressive resting place within the limits of Cubism, and as a way of communicating the incommunicable".
Even though Varo was critical of her childhood religion, Catholicism, her work was influenced by religion. She differed from other Surrealists because of her constant use of religion in her work.She also turned to a wide range of mystic and hermetic traditions, both Western and non-Western for influence. She was influenced by her belief in magic and animistic faiths. She was very connected to nature and believed that there was strong relation between the plant, human, animal, and mechanical world. Her belief in mystical forces greatly influenced her paintings.Varo was aware of the importance of biology, chemistry, physics and botany, but thought it should blend together with other aspects of life.She turned with equal interest to the ideas of Carl Jung as to the theories of George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart and the Sufis, and was as fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail as with sacred geometry, alchemy and the I Ching. In 1938 and 1939 Varo joined her closest companions Frances, Roberto Matta and Gordon Onslow Ford in exploring the fourth dimension, basing much of their studies off of Ouspensky's book Tertium Oganum. The books Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy by Grillot de Givry and The History of Magic and the Occult by Kurt Seligmann were highly valued in Breton's Surrealist circle. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

She was also greatly influenced by her childhood journeys. She often depicted out of the ordinary vehicles in mystifying lands. These works echo her family travels in her childhood.Also, the Surrealist movement tended to degrade women. Some of Varo's art elevated women, while still falling under Surrealism. But it was not necessarily her intention for her work to address problems in gender inequality. But, her art and actions challenged the traditional patriarchy, and it was mainly Wolfgang Paalen who encouraged her in this with his theories about the origins of civilization in matriarchal cultures and the analogies between pre-classic Europe and pre-Mayan Mexico.Wikipedia

Master of Surrealism Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington  (6 April 1917 – 25 May 2011) was an English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Leonora Carrington was also a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s.arrington was born in Clayton Green, Chorley, Lancashire, England. Her father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, and her mother, Maureen (née Moorhead), was Irish. She had three brothers: Patrick, Gerald, and Arthur.
Educated by governesses, tutors, and nuns, she was expelled from two schools, including New Hall School, Chelmsford, for her rebellious behaviour, until her family sent her to Florence, where she attended Mrs Penrose's Academy of Art. In 1927, at the age of ten, she saw her first Surrealist painting in a Left Bank gallery in Paris and later met many Surrealists, including Paul Éluard.Her father opposed her career as an artist, but her mother encouraged her. She returned to England and was presented at Court, but according to her, she brought a copy of Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza (1936) to read instead. In 1935, she attended the Chelsea School of Art in London for one year, and with the help of her father's friend Serge Chermayeff, she was able to transfer to Ozenfant Academy in London (1935–38).She became familiar with Surrealism from a copy of Herbert Read's book, Surrealism (1936), which was given to her by her mother,[8] but she received little encouragement from her family to forge an artistic career. The Surrealist poet and patron Edward James was the champion of her work in Britain; James bought many of her paintings and arranged a show in 1947 for her work at Pierre Matisse's Gallery in New York. Some works are still hanging at James' former family home, currently West Dean College in West Dean, West Sussex..When she returned to Britain, she enrolled in the art school established by the French modernist Amédée Ozenfant

 N 1936, Leonora saw the work of the German surrealist Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and was attracted to the Surrealist artist before she even met him. In 1937, Carrington met Ernst at a party held in London. The artists bonded and returned together to Paris, where Ernst promptly separated from his wife. In 1938, leaving Paris, they settled in Saint Martin d'Ardèche in southern France. The new couple collaborated and supported each other's artistic development. The two artists created sculptures of guardian animals (Ernst created his birds and Carrington created a plaster horse head) to decorate their home in Saint Martin d'Ardèche. In 1939, Carrington painted a portrait of Max Ernst, as a tribute to their relationship. The portrait was her first Surrealist work, and it was called "The Inn of the Dawn". It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The person in the painting is a cross between a male and a female, who is seated in a room with a rocking horse on the wall. Carrington had an interest in animals, myth, and symbolism. This interest became stronger when she moved to Mexico and started a relationship with the émigré Spanish artist Remedios Varo. The two studied alchemy, the kabbalah, and the post-classic Mayan mystical writings, Popol Vuh.With the outbreak of World War II Ernst, who was German, was arrested by the French authorities for being a "hostile alien". With the intercession of Paul Éluard, and other friends, including the American journalist Varian Fry, he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the Nazis invaded France, Ernst was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, because his art was considered by the Nazis to be "degenerate". He managed to escape and, leaving Carrington behind, fled to America with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, who was a sponsor of the arts.

 Following the escape to Lisbon, Carrington arranged passage out of Europe with Renato Leduc, a Mexican Ambassador. Leduc was a friend of Pablo Picasso, and agreed to a marriage of convenience with Carrington so that she would be allowed to cross the Maginot line due to the diplomatic immunity accorded to a diplomat's wife. Leduc spirited Carrington away to Mexico, which she grew to love and where she lived, on and off, for the rest of her life.The pair divorced in 1943. Events from this period continued to inform her work.After spending part of the 1960s in New York City, Carrington lived and worked in Mexico once again.While in Mexico, she was asked, in 1963, to create a mural which she named El Mundo Magico de los Mayas, and which was influenced by folk stories from the region. The mural is now located in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.
Carrington designed Mujeres conciencia (1973), a poster, for the Women's Liberation movement in Mexico, depicting a ‘new eve’.Carrington, personally and primarily focused on psychic freedom, understood that such freedom could not be achieved until political freedom is also accomplished. Through these beliefs, Carrington understood that “greater cooperation and sharing of knowledge between politically active women in Mexico and North America” was important for emancipation.[3] Carrington’s political commitment led to her winning the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Women’s Caucus for Art convention in New York in 1986.
" I didn't have time to be anyone's muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist."

 Carrington stated that: "I painted for myself...I never believed anyone would exhibit or buy my work." She was not interested in the writings of Sigmund Freud, as were other Surrealists in the movement. She instead focused on magical realism and alchemy and used autobiographical detail and symbolism as the subjects of her paintings. Carrington was interested in presenting female sexuality as she experienced it, rather than as that of male surrealists’ characterization of female sexuality.[30] Carrington’s work of the 1940s is focused on the underlying theme of women’s role in the creative process.

In Self-Portrait (1938), Carrington offers her own interpretation of female sexuality by looking toward her own sexual reality rather than theorizing on the subject, as was custom by other Surrealists in the movement. Carrington’s move away from the characterization of female sexuality subverted the traditional male role of the Surrealist movement. Self-Portrait (1938) also offers insight into Carrington’s interest in the ‘alchemical transformation of matter and her response to the Surrealist cult of desire as a source of creative inspiration.’ The hyena depicted in Self-Portrait (1938) joins both male and female into a whole, metaphoric of the worlds of the night and the dream. The symbol of the hyena is present in many of Carrington's later works, and it was even used to depict Carrington in Max Ernst's work "La Debutante" in his book The Oval Lady.Her book The Hearing Trumpet deals with aging and the female body. It follows the story of older women who, in the words of Madeleine Cottenet-Hage in her essay "The Body Subversive: Corporeal Imagery in Carrington, Prassinos and Mansour", seek to destroy the institutions of their imaginative society to usher in a "spirit of sisterhood." The Hearing Trumpet also criticizes the shaming of the nude female body, and it is believed to be one of the first books to tackle the notion of gender identity in the twenty-first century. Carrington's views of sexuality, however, differ from contemporary feminists in that she sees maternity as a key experience to femininity. Carrington stated, "We, women, are animals conditioned by maternity.... For female animals love-making, which is followed by the great drama of the birth of a new animal, pushes us into the depths of the biological cave"Carrington's art often depicts horses, as in her Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse) and the painting The Horses of Lord Candlestick Her fascination with drawing horses began in her childhood. Horses also appear in her writings. In her first published short story, "The House of Fear", Carrington portrays a horse in the role of a psychic guide to a young heroine. In 1935, Carrington's first essay, "Jezzamathatics or Introduction to the Wonderful Process of Painting", was published before her story "The Seventh Horse". Carrington often used codes of words to dictate interpretation in her artwork. "Candlestick" is a code that she commonly used to represent her family, and the word "lord" for her father..Wikipedia

Surrealism Josef Liesler

Josef Liesler (19 September 1912, in Vidolice near Kadaň – 23 August 2005, in Prague) was a Czech surrealist painter, graphic designer, illustrator, exlibris and postage stamp designer.
He studied art at University of the Architecture and Structural Engineering, Prague in 1934-38 under professors Cyril Bouda, Oldřich Blažíček, and Josef Sejpka. He became a member of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts (1942) and SČUG Hollar (1945). He illustrated over one hundred book titles and he created many drawings of postage stamps and exlibris. He received a UNESCO award for the finest stamp design (Hydrologic decade). His production is represented in many prominent Czech and international collections, including the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.Wikipedia

 

Sabin Balasa

Sabin Bălașa (June 17, 1932 in Dobriceni, Olt – April 1, 2008, Bucharest) was a contemporary Romanian painter. His works are described by himself as belonging to cosmic Romanticism.He completed his high school education at Frații Buzești High School in Craiova in 1950. Among Bălaşa's most notable works are several large-scale fresco paintings, such as those decorating the inside of the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași.

 In 1973 and 1976 the Bucharest Mayor's office ordered and paid him to paint the portraits of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. In the late 1980s, Bălașa was accused of promoting the cult of personality. Apart from the works contracted by the Bucharest City hall, no other proof has been produced. Bălașa's father and uncle were in fact imprisoned for more than 20 years for opposing the Communist regime
In June 2005, Bălașa sued the French paper Le Monde for defamation after said paper reproduced a propaganda painting by another painter, claiming it was one of his . Le Monde subsequently acknowledged the error .Wikipedia

 He naturally started from the traditions of the Romanian art, which he assimilated in a creative way, and studied with interest and fervour the history and mythology of the Romanian people, pledging himself to conjure up a fascinating universe of great expressive power, conveying to the onlooker an impression or a rare strength. Whether he paints such heroes of the national pantheon as Decebalus, Stephen the Great, Balcescu or Eminescu, evokes characters of legend, epic or ballad or creates images living beyond time and space, Sabin Balasa constantly remains faithful to the most generous and noble human ideals.( Tutt Art ) 

Helmut Leherb

 

Helmut Leherbauer ((Vienna 1933-1997)Austrian Painter - "Maitre Leherb" and Co-founder of "Austrian Phantastic Realism", later turnded to Surrealism. He was born 14 February 1933 in Vienna and died 28 June 1997 in Vienna.
He studied at Vienna and Stockholm Art Academy. He worked a lot with ceramic and sculpturing. Some of his artworks can still be seen in Vienna. In later years he changed his style to more surrealistic elements by leaving "Austrian Phantastic Realism" and artists like Arik Brauer or Ernst Fuchs. He poisened himself with too much ceramic dust, so that his health condition was very bad in the last years of his life. He finally died in 1997. (discogs.com)

 In 1964 Leherb, with his Time Destruction Manifesto, was nominated for the Biennale in Venice, yet his participation was prevented by the government reshuffling of the new minister of education, Theodor Piffl-Percevic. What had been planned was a dark blue pavilion, in which dead doves, umbrellas and dolls would be attached to the walls. An art scandal loomed, which the tone-setting art journal in Paris, “Arts et Loisirs”, entitled “The first scandal of the Biennale in Venice!”. The German magazine “Stern” featured the scandal on the front page: “Surrealist Leherb: No white mice for Venice.. see Wikipedia