Remedios Varo, Embroidering the Earth's Mantle, 1961

Remedios Varo's triptych Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle of 1961 uses both narrative and fantastic modes of transportation to convey her vision of escape to freedom.  Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle is the central panel in the triptych; it is preceded by Toward the Tower, and followed by The Escape.  In Toward the Tower (above), Varo depicts a pack of essentially identical girls following their leader in a trance-like state.  Only one figure veers her gaze, potentially Varo's inclusion of herself as the heroine, she is the rebellious resistor.

In the central panel, Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle (above), the same young women are fervently working in their studio space - a small, isolated environment that emerges commonly in Varo’s work.  Inside the tower, the women are weaving out the surface of the earth under intense supervision.  The rebellious heroine is here as well, spinning out a hidden secret within her weaving - an image of her with her lover.  In the final panel, Varo reveals The Escape (below); the heroine has successfully fled her restrictive world with her lover on a fantastical umbrella-like ship.  This ship in particular reveals a strong influence from Leonora Carrington who often included such motifs in her earlier work (several of Varo’s recurring images come from Carrington’s work in the 1940s).  

     The autobiographical implications of this work seem clear: Varo’s own escape from the creatively restricting environment of her childhood with her lover Gerardo Lizarraga. The pairing of fantastical and historical elements is a common in Varo's work, she combines her actual escape with an escape through the imagination.  As a woman living within confinements (both in her childhood, as well as in her adult life as a female painter in the male dominated Surrealist field), escape through the imagination was a strong part of her life.

References:

Bazzano- Nelson, Florencia. Lecture: November 7, 2006. Tulane University.   

Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985).
Kaplan,  Janet A. “Remedios Varo: Voyages and Visions,” Women’s Art Journal 1.2 (1980-81).
Kaplan,  Janet A, Unexpected Journeys: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988).

Art:

Collection of Walter Gruen, Mexico City