A Spanish-born painter and writer who found her truest self in exile, Remedios Varo (1908–1963) created worlds that fused alchemy, mysticism, and mechanics. Educated in science and art, she fled the Spanish Civil War and settled in Mexico, where she became part of a constellation that included Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna. Her canvases are inhabited by androgynous inventors, luminous laboratories, and machines of longing — all painted with the discipline of a watchmaker and the tenderness of a mystic.

Varo blurred the boundary between observation and enchantment. She treated painting (and occasionally writing) as an experiment in perception: to see what happens when curiosity is given a soul.