E
xecuted in 1959, Ritos extraños captures the essence of Remedios Varo’s imaginative world—a realm where transformation and ritual unfold with quiet mystery. With meticulous precision and a muted, earthy palette, Varo constructs a stage-like environment that feels both enclosed and theatrically expansive.
At the center of the composition a ghost-like androgynous figure, clad in a pea green, form-fitting suit, strikes a balletic pose mid-threshold, caught between entering and exiting a realm obscured by a heavy draped curtain. The space is rendered with uncanny attention to detail: wood grain textures, a hook with coat and umbrella, and the architectural framing of arches and alcoves ground the scene in recognizably domestic motifs. Yet nothing is quite as it seems. The curtain does not just divide space—it conceals and reveals, suggesting that we are witnessing a secretive initiation or transformation. The figure’s theatrical pose evokes both performance and metamorphosis, recalling Varo’s ongoing engagement with themes of mystical alchemy, and identity.
“The encasement of Varo’s figures in chrysalislike cloaks is reinforced by the tight, shallow spaces that enclose them. Using architecture much as she used her costumes, as a way of confining her characters… such architecture is as much her subject matter as the phantasms that inhabit it, grounding her inventions in this world.”
The composition’s verticality and warm, ochre-toned atmosphere heighten its sense of solitude and inward intensity. Varo's architectural interiors often mirror psychological interiors, and in this work, the labyrinthine corridor and enclosing walls echo the inner journey of the self.
Painted at the height of her mature period in Mexico City, Ritos extraños reflects Varo’s alignment with Surrealist currents, while also asserting her distinct visual language—one shaped by mysticism and medieval iconography. Her figures, frequently solitary and introspective, operate within spaces that resist time and logic, navigating dreamlike rituals that feel both ancient and personal.
Remedios Varo’s creative evolution cannot be fully understood without acknowledging her friendship with Leonora Carrington, a relationship that developed into a shared intellectual and artistic symbiosis. Varo and Carrington were part of the Surrealist group in Paris, where they socialized with André Breton, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí and other key figures. Both fled Europe during the war, resettled in Mexico City, and found in each other a rare kinship—one grounded in a mutual fascination with alchemy and the feminine subconscious. Together with Kati Horna, they formed what scholars have called a “mystic trinity,” collaborating and exchanging ideas that blurred the line between life and art. Art historian Susan L. Aberth notes that “their relationship was unique in the male-dominated Surrealist circle; it was based on mutual respect and the serious development of a distinctly feminine visual language.” (Susan L Aberth. Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art. Lund Humphries, 2004.)
Though separated by centuries, Hieronymus Bosch’s proto-surrealist vision found new life in Varo’s work, particularly in her obsessive attention to minute detail and her interest in the mystical consequences of human behavior. Varo saw Bosch not as a medieval moralist, but as a “fellow explorer of interior landscapes, an artist of the psyche as much as of the world.” ( Janet A. Kaplan, Unexpected Journeys: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo. Abbeville Press, 2000.) Varo’s reinterpretation of this work reveals her ability to synthesize historical references—from Renaissance linear perspective to Surrealist cosmology —into a uniquely and visionary visual language.
This work is emblematic of Varo’s ability to conjure worlds that are at once intensely detailed and suspended in ambiguity. In Ritos Extraños, she stages a ritual not just for the character within the frame, but for the viewer—inviting us to peer behind the curtain, and enter the theater of her mind.