The Re-enchantment of Surrealism: Remedios Varo’s Visionary Artists

Abstract

The visionary prowess of the artist was established, in both the visual and verbal arts, by the Symbolists in fin-de-siècle France. This article asserts a continuity between the avowed spiritual dimension of their work and the visionary power of surrealist art asserted—despite strong resistance from the centre—by a group of renegade surrealists in the 1920s and beyond. To do so, it explores the representations of artists that Spanish-born Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908–1963) depicts in her work, demonstrating how they might be better understood when analysed in relation to Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (1866?–1949) esoteric aesthetics. In doing so, it reveals a neglected, postsecular trajectory in the history of Surrealism.