Garden of love 1951

This painting, “Garden of Love,” probably made with oils, is by the surrealist artist Remedios Varo. It depicts a love garden scene with an otherworldly atmosphere. Varo was such a precise painter. I can imagine her in the studio making tiny marks with a small brush, creating details one at a time. The surface is very smooth, with no real trace of the hand, which gives it a magical feeling. It's a world somewhere between fairy tale and dream. Varo was interested in alchemy, mysticism, and science, so I imagine she was thinking about the connection between these different languages when making this work. The bird-headed man in the painting is intriguing. What is his relationship to the statue of a woman? I keep thinking of Leonora Carrington, another surrealist painter. They were friends, so they were probably swapping stories and visions. Varo, like Carrington, was an exile, fleeing Europe to Mexico during the Second World War. The themes and symbols in this painting, like many surrealist works, feel like they were born out of a unique vision. This work feels like a page torn from a book of secrets.