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
   

Leonora Carrington, Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen, 1975

     Leonora Carrington's work teems with references to escape and freedom, alchemy and transformation. These themes are often closely tied with her biography; running away from her restrictive childhood and into the male-dominated Surrealist world, that Carrington sought out a means of escape through painting and her dear friend Remedios Varo is no surprise. Carrington and Varo, both ex-patriot female painters living in Mexico, helped each other escape everyday confinements through the transformative powers of alchemical cooking.

     At its root, Alchemy is the ancient practice of transforming base metals into gold. However, in their sharing of recipes and ideas, alchemy enabled Carrington and Varo to transform a traditional domestic space (the kitchen) into a powerful site of female fortitude. Susan Aberth notes that, “for Carrington, traditional sites of female domestic labor are transformed into arenas of occult drama.” In her painting of 1975, Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen (above), she transforms the kitchen from a place of female oppression and labor into one of female power. Carrington has represented the kitchen as a place of strange transformations. Women are engaged in mysterious activities in a secret world unbeknownst to men; the women in this kitchen appear not to be cooking dinner for their family, but instead concocting magical spells. The painting also includes women huddled over a Mexican griddle, a place where many Mexican women spend most of their day, cooking. The garlic cloves on the floor also have a history in Mexican healing and magical rituals, of which Carrington was very interested.

References:

Aberth, Susan, “Leonora Carrington,” Women’s Art Journal, 51.3 (1992). 

Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.)   

Chadwick, Whitney.  “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.”  Women’s Art Journal 7.1 (1986). 

The Mexican Museum, Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985 (San Francisco: The Mexican Museum, 1991). 
Art:
Charles B. Goddard Center, Ardmore, Oklahoma