Shifting Realities: Migration and Surreality in the Work of Remedios Varo

This paper will examine Spanish painter Remedios Varo’s attempts to capture the complexities of immigrant reality during her exile in Mexico between 1941 and1963. It will analyse themes of displacement and migration within her oeuvre, focusing on the following three concepts: migration as escape, perpetual motion, and permeable spaces. Through this analysis, it aims to interrogate the manner in which the unfixing of traditional notions of reality, seen within Varo’s work, was both influenced by and articulates the experience of exile.