b. Angelés, Spain, 1908; d. Mexico City, 1963). Varo is known for her unique style of surrealist paintings. Varo was born In Spain in 1908. Her father was an engineer and taught Varo mechanical drawing. She had a strict Catholic education before becoming one of the first women to enroll in the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1924. She traveled to France in 1930 and returned to Spain in 1932, settling in Barcelona. She became involved with political activists during the Spanish Civil War and moved with her husband, the Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret to France after the Fascist victory in 1936. In Paris she became involved in the Surrealist movement and was included in the 1938 Surrealist exhibition in Paris as well as the 1940 Surrealist show in Mexico City. Varo developed a close friendship with Leonora Carrington, a fellow woman Surrealist who shared her interest in fantasy, dreams alchemy and mysticism. She left Paris for Mexico City with the invasion of the German Army in 1942. In Mexico, Varo worked as a commercial artist, decorated furniture and restored pottery to support herself and her husband. Varo divorced Peret in 1947 and traveled to Venezuela. It was there that she met and married a wealthy Austrian immigrant Walter Gruen. With his financial support Varo was able to devote all of her time to painting. Her works from this period constitute her mature style that combines her background in science with her interest in Surrealism and mysticism. In 1956 she was given a solo exhibition in Mexico City and her work gained the recognition of key figures in Mexican art circles including Diego Rivera and Octavio Paz. She died in 1963 and was given two posthumous retrospectives at the Museo de Art Moderno in Mexico City in 1964 and 1971 as well as an exhibition in New York in 1986 at the New York Academy of Science.
