Customer Reviews

UNEXPECTED JOURNEYS: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is quite good, and to my knowledge, the only one available covering Varo's work. As such, it is essential for her devotees, and even to some extent, for fans of surrealism. Both Varo and her fellow artist Leonora Carrington, (whose works are thematically and technically very similar) deserve wider appreciation. It is, however, excessive to award the book five stars. The reader might compare it to Druick's "Redon", which, with its simultaneously wide-ranging and penetrating scholarship and analysis, and luminous reproductions epitomizes a five-star art book. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Kaplan's book.

Unexpected Journeys is one of my all-time favorite books. Not only did it give me the opportunity to connect with Remedios Varo, but it expanded my understanding of surrealism, and feminism. The prints are amazing. I couldn't put it down. Thoroughly informative. Kaplan displays rare insight.

This book is a must for all Varo fans as well as fans of surrealism and the surrealist movement. It is well researched and well written. Having been exposed to her work through an advertisement and buying this book to learn more about her, I highly reccommend this. I have read many bio's and this one has magnificent reproductions of her artwork throughout as well as photographs of the artist herself

This wonderful book let the reader know Remedios Varo as a painter and as a woman. It gives a perspective of the world in those years and helps understand the surrealism as a unique movement in the arts. It has plates in color of the most famous paintings of Varo and a complete explanation of them with a very complete bibliography.

Having researched the life and work of Remedios Varo for nearly two years, I have found Janet Kaplan's book a must because she had an astonishing budget and support for having a fine printed book with excellent images and a fairly good biography of this artist. However, having read almost everything published on Varo, reading her own writings and kwnowing the world she lived her last ten years, I consider Kaplan book to be too far fetched on the personal interpretation she makes about Remedios Varo's life and work. Trying her best to make her preconceived ideas about Varo's paintings to fit in, this book is will easely fool those who doesn't know about surrealism, Mexico in the fifties and Remedios Varo.

I greatly enjoy this book. She was part of the Surrealism and the book gives an excellent overview of Remedios Varo's life, her artworks, and her surrealists friends. The book shows a great compilation of her works and her great contribution to Mexican Art. Eventhough she born in Spain, she called Mexico her home.If you want to learn more about Spanish Surrealists this is a great artist to read about.