Remedios Varo

Known for: magical Surrealist painting of female figures

Remedios Varo studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid before joining the Surrealist circle in Paris, where she worked with Breton and Péret. She fled to Mexico in 1941 as a wartime refugee and spent the rest of her career in Mexico City, developing a highly personal Surrealism of magical female figures engaged in alchemical and astronomical pursuits. Her work was largely unknown outside Mexico at her death in 1963 and has since become among the most popular in Mexican museums.