Ascension - Remedios Varo
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Description
A surrealist painting by Remedios Varo featuring a figure in a flowing orange garment ascending within a mysterious, atmospheric landscape.
Remedios Varo, a Spanish-born artist who spent her most productive years in Mexico, created Ascension in 1957. This work displays her characteristic approach to the surreal, blending technical precision with dreamlike, hermetic narratives. The composition features a central figure draped in voluminous, flame-coloured fabric that appears to defy gravity, suggesting a state of spiritual or physical elevation. The figure stands upon a small, raft-like platform, navigating a dark, turbulent stream that cuts through a desolate, otherworldly environment.
Technically, Varo employs a meticulous application of paint, using fine brushwork to render the textures of the fabric and the surrounding terrain. The background contains a spiralling, tower-like structure, a recurring motif in her oeuvre that often represents a site of alchemical or intellectual transformation. The colour palette is dominated by deep, earthy tones, which contrast with the luminous, saturated orange of the figure's garment. This contrast draws the eye immediately to the subject, isolating them within the vast, mysterious space.
Her work frequently explores themes of isolation, scientific curiosity, and mystical experience. In Ascension, the sense of movement is ambiguous; the figure seems caught between a departure from the physical world and a journey into an unknown realm. The atmosphere is quiet and contemplative, avoiding the chaotic imagery often associated with European surrealism. Instead, Varo constructs a self-contained universe governed by its own internal logic and symbolic language. The painting invites the viewer to consider the nature of transition and the solitary path of the seeker, rendered with a clarity that makes the impossible appear entirely plausible.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
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- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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Care & Cleaning
To keep your artwork looking its best:
- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Ascension - Remedios Varo
Artist Biography
Remedios Varo
She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1930, one of the few women in her class. In Barcelona she fell in with the Surrealists and, through them, with the poet Benjamin Peret, who became her partner. When Paris fell, she was jailed on suspicion of espionage. After her release she and Peret boarded one of the last ships allowed to leave France, arriving in Mexico in 1941.
In Mexico City she became inseparable from the English Surrealist Leonora Carrington. Together with the photographer Kati Horna, the three were called the Three Witches. They attended meetings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky followers, studied alchemy and Jungian dream theory, and put ink in tapioca pearls to serve as caviar at dinner parties for Octavio Paz.
She did not paint prolifically until the last thirteen years of her life, once she was financially stable and free of wartime displacement. The paintings from this period are meticulous: tiny figures in architectural spaces that obey their own physics, conducting experiments with starlight or weaving the fabric of the universe from threads pulled out of the air.
Her posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City in 1971 drew more visitors than shows by Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros. She had died of a heart attack in 1963, at fifty-four, at the peak of her working life.
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