María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga known as Remedios Varo (1908-1963) was born in northern Spain and grew up in a home with a staunch Catholic mother and a free-spirited father who was a hydraulic engineer. It was he who taught her to draw and supported her desire to become an artist.
She was only 15 years old when she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and during the 1920s, she was influenced by the city’s artistic avant-garde, including Lorca, Buñuel, and Dalí. The increasing unrest in Spain in the 1930s led her to travel to Paris, where she became involved in surrealist circles. When the Nazis invaded Paris, she had to flee to Marseille and was among the artists rescued from France in 1941 with the help of Peggy Guggenheim and Helena Rubinstein, among others.
Varo settled in Mexico City with her partner, the surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, and became part of a vibrant community of Mexican and European artists who drew inspiration from Mexico’s culture and geography. In the early years, she had to support herself and Péret through odd jobs, e.g., creating illustrations for advertising campaigns.
It was not until 1949 that she was able to seriously engage in painting, and a few years later, her marriage to the Austrian emigrant Walter Gruen meant she no longer had to worry about finances. Her closest friends – and collaborators – became the British artist Leonora Carrington and the Hungarian photojournalist Kati Horna. They were so close that they were referred to as “the three witches.”
Remedios Varo achieved enormous success with her paintings, but since each one took a long time to make, her output was limited, and people had to join a waiting list for her works. She died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of only 54. André Breton, who is considered the spiritual father figure of surrealism, paid tribute to her with the words: “The sorceress has left us too soon.”ª
Olga Ravn and Samanta Schweblin were interviewed by Nanna Dahm. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Alejandro Cardenas, and Gabriel de la Mora were interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner. All conversations took place between June and August 2026.
Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan (Alejandro Cardenas & Olga Ravn), Odette Peralta (Gabriel de la Mora), Olivia Newport (Samanta Schweblin), Sean Hanley (Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons)
Edit: Nanna Dahm & Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Nanna Dahm & Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
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