A star of the Mexican art scene whose works are now coveted around the globe, Varo was a leader in the Surrealist movement in the Americas. Born in Angles in northeastern Spain, she studied at the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Art in Madrid, where she regularly visited the Prado to examine the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, and El Greco. Varo graduated in 1930 and joined the avant-garde circles of Barcelona and Paris; her paintings, drawings, and collages appeared in Surrealist publications and in internal exhibitions. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the Nazi occupation of France, and like many other intellectuals and Spanish refugees, Varo was briefly arrested; in 1941 she and her partner, the Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, fled to Mexico City. She spent the rest of her life in Mexico, where she developed her mature artistic style and completed her most compelling and influential paintings. Varo worked in a variety of positions that informed her art, designing sets and costumes for the theatre, creating advertisements for Bayer pharmaceuticals, and making technical drawings of disease-carrying insects for the Ministry of Public Health in Venezuela. Her longstanding interests in supernatural forces, alchemy and alternative realities were nurtured by Mexican traditions of curanderismo (Indigenous healing) and folklore. Varo devoted herself fully to her own art around 1949, where she began a relationship with the Austrian emigre Walter Gruen, who became her supporter and champion. Inspired by Renaissance panel painting, she developed a meticulous process of transferring underdrawings onto gessoed fiberboard and building up luminous colors with layers of oil and varnish, adding tiny details with a single-hair brush. The first exhibition of her work in Mexico, in 1955, was a breakthrough success; Diego Rivera proclaimed her 'among the most important women artists in the world" and she instantly gained a waitlist of collectors. Although most of her works are intimately scaled, Tailleur pour dames is one of the rare, large canvases that she made as her reputation grew. Varo died unexpectedly in 1963; a retrospective, including this painting, was held in 1971 at the Museum de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. It was the most well attended exhibitions in the institution's history, drawing more visitors than those of the famed male Mexican muralists.


Tailleur pour dames is a major painting from the height of Varo's career. It demonstrates the key motifs of her mature work, including strong female protagonists, stage-like architectural spaces, and representations of the transformative craft of sewing. Here, Varo's otherworldly interior is the showroom of a tailor dedicated to making women's dresses rather than men's suits. Each garment possesses a magical capability -- a dress converts into a sailboat, a scarf stiffens to become a seat and tray, the fabric of a hooded cape fizzes like champagne. Invisible powers are suggested by the magnet on the floor attracting metal pins that come from nowhere, the ominous shadow that lurks behind the tailor, and the ghost-like dress floating through the window. Influenced by the writings of Freud and Jung, Varo described this complex composition in relation to psychology: "The client, who is looking at the models, splits into two other persons because she does not know which model to choose, and her somewhat transparent doubles represent her doubts." The trios of women in Tailleur pour dames may also reference Varo's close friendships and artistic collaborations with fellow Surrealists Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna, who also developed their careers while living in Mexico. The MFA has no major works by the Surrealists, and aside from three photographs by Horna and a small etching by Carrington, none made in the Americas. Presenting Surrealism to our audiences through a major painting by a woman artist working in Latin America would be a powerful statement. This is a truly transformative acquisition, not just for the Art of the Americas department, but also for the entire MFA.

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