Night-fighter 

This is Remedios Varo’s painting, with no known date, which she called Night-fighter. The owl, draped in what appears to be a golden shawl, strides with purpose through an ambiguous, dreamlike space. Since antiquity, the owl has been a symbol of wisdom, yet also of darkness and the occult. In ancient Greece, it was associated with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, while in other cultures, it is a harbinger of death or a creature of the night. Varo's owl embodies this duality, its human-like stance suggesting an intelligence that transcends the animal kingdom. Consider the recurring motif of the wise old crone shrouded, from the ancient Sibyls to modern representations of witches. The golden shawl, usually a symbol of divinity, adds a layer of mystery. It evokes the complex relationship between knowledge, the sacred, and the shadow self, suggesting a journey into the depths of the unconscious. We are left to contemplate the eternal dance between light and darkness.