Retrato del Doctor Ignacio Chavez - Portrait of Doctor Ignacio Chavez by Remedios Varo
by Remedios Varo
Title
Retrato del Doctor Ignacio Chavez - Portrait of Doctor Ignacio Chavez by Remedios Varo
Artist
Remedios Varo
Medium
Painting - Oil On Masonite
Description
Retrato del Doctor Ignacio Chávez - Portrait of Doctor Ignacio Chávez - surrealist painting by Spanish-Mexican artist Remedios Varo.
This painting is Varo's tribute to Mexico’s modern Renaissance man, Igancio Chávez, a pioneering physician and cardiologist, who was also a noted humanist and a founding member of the Colegio Nacional, the honorary academy for Mexico’s leading artists and scientists. ‘Humanism is not a luxury,’ he once reflected. ‘It means culture, understanding people in their aspirations and miseries; a valuation of what is good, what is beautiful, and what is fair in life; settling the rules that govern our interior world; an eagerness to better ourselves that leads us, as in the phrase of a philosopher, ‘to equal our thoughts with our life.’ He allowed that ‘science is something different, it makes us strong, but not better,’ and concluded that, ‘for this reason, a physician becomes wiser as he becomes more cultured’
Varo's portrait of Dr. Chávez suggestively commingles cardiological and spiritual healing. The doctor appears within a tessellated sepia façade, his figure merging with the layered architecture of the archway; a constellation gleams against a ruddy sky, directing three androgynous figures through gossamer rays of light. Varo acknowledged that she painted the physician ‘in somewhat priestly clothing to suggest that his profession is perhaps a kind of priesthood. In his hand he holds a key. The persons coming from the gorge have a little door in place of a heart and he winds them up as they pass by’ .
More Remedios Varo paintings available in the collection.
Uploaded
November 17th, 2023
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