Exhibitions
Remedios Varo, between dream and science, will arrive at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is dedicating a major exhibition to Remedios Varo (1908–1963), one of the most singular figures of 20th-century Surrealism. From September 18, 2026, to January 10, 2027, the Danish museum will bring together a wide selection of her work to display, for the first time in Europe and within a major museum setting, the complexity of an artistic trajectory built upon imagination, science, mysticism, and the exploration of inner worlds.
Varo created a style of painting in which dream worlds and scientific research coexist with magical thinking. Her fantastical interiors and imaginary landscapes are populated by mysterious musicians, eccentric scientists, enigmatic travelers, and hybrid creatures. Everything seems to follow its own logic, as if each painting were the stage for a story yet to be deciphered.
The exhibition also represents an expansion of the Louisiana Museum's relationship with the artist. In 2020, the museum presented some of her works as part of the Fantastic Women exhibition. Now, five years later, Varo is the focus of a show that explores her entire fascinating career and allows viewers to understand the evolution of her utterly personal pictorial language.
Precision, poetry, and alchemy
One of the great contrasts that runs through Varo's work is the coexistence of precision and fantasy. Although she employed techniques linked to chance and surrealist exploration, her painting is characterized by an extremely meticulous, almost scientific, execution. Every figure, architectural element, object, and landscape seems to form part of a carefully constructed system.
The artist went so far as to claim that "the world of dreams and the real world are the same," an idea that encapsulates much of her artistic vision. Her paintings function as spaces of transformation in which different techniques, knowledge, and imagery combine in an almost alchemical way.
The result is an enigmatic and cinematic work, populated by characters who seem to be in the midst of secret processes of discovery or metamorphosis. Science is not presented as opposed to magic, but rather as another path to accessing that which remains hidden.
From Leonardo to modern science
Varo's sources of inspiration were extraordinarily diverse. Her universe brings together artistic and scientific references such as Leonardo da Vinci, the visionary literature of Jules Verne, and the theories of physicist Niels Bohr, along with philosophical and esoteric traditions such as those linked to the Armenian thinker and occult master G.I. Gurdjieff.
This breadth of interests also explains the formal singularity of his painting. His treatment of color and his meticulous construction of scenes maintain links with the tradition of Italian painting from the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, while his characters and situations seem to come from a parallel world.
The exhibition thus proposes to understand Varo not only as a surrealist artist, but as a creator who built her own language from disciplines and traditions that are seemingly far removed from each other.
A female perspective on surrealism
The feminist dimension also occupies an essential place in Remedios Varo's career. The artist developed a conception of surrealism far removed from the dominant models of her time and formulated an imagery based on experiences, concerns, and forms of creativity linked to the female condition.
Her protagonists, especially the female figures, often appear as creators, explorers, scientists, or alchemists capable of transforming their environment. In this sense, her work can be read as a vindication of women's imagination and creative capacity in the face of cultural structures that had historically limited their autonomy.
Organized in collaboration with the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and with Mexican art historian and surrealism specialist Tere Arcq, the exhibition will allow visitors to explore the breadth of a production that continues to challenge the boundaries between reality and fantasy, science and spirituality, precision and dream.
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