Tailleur pour dames is the first major Surrealist painting to enter MFA Boston’s collection. In the painting, Varo, a woman and European immigrant to the Americas, explores dreams, the unconscious, and beauty in the familiar. A customer peers through her lorgnette at three magical garments: a rose-colored dress that transforms into a sailboat, a blue scarf stiffening into a seat and tray for cocktails, and a dark hooded cloak that fizzes like champagne. A tailor, whose nose and eyeglasses take the shape of scissors, recedes into the background, but his shadow looms over the client and her choices.

Oil on board.

Museum purchase with funds by exchange from the Alfred Stieglitz Collection--Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, and a Gift of the Stephen and Sybil Stone Foundation. © 2023 Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid.

2021.1077