Every once in a while, a comment arrives in the Basement from out of the blue. Why, just recently a visitor commented on a post from September 2007, sharing his personal experiences visiting Inca structures in Peru and Bolivia. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the occasional comment from my “faithful reader,” but it’s especially gratifying to get interesting feedback from a perfect stranger who happened to stumble upon a particular blog entry.
This time, however, it got me thinking—or scheming, I guess the word is. About a year ago L. and I acquired a painting that is signed “R. Varo.” That would be Remedios Varo, the great surrealist painter—or would it? Trouble is, it’s not in her mature style. And further, there are very few examples of her “immature style” in the literature. So—is it authentic?
Here are a few examples of Remedios Varo’s work:
And here’s the painting we bought:
In addition to scouring the catalogue raisonné and the internet, we contacted the author of a book on Remedios Varo, but have not heard back. We also took the painting to a local auction house, where the staff was surprisingly ignorant about Remedios Varo, despite the fact that a local museum had a huge show devoted to her in 2000. In short, we have come up dry in our research.
So I am tossing this painting out into the wide electronic world in the hopes that someone, somewhere, owns or has seen an R. Varo that is similar to ours.
