ABSTRACT


      The aim of the present thesis is to analyze certain symbolic elements dealing with the body as found in the artwork of women surrealist artists who developed their poetics in the Mexican context: Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.
      The first section commences with an exploration of the European genesis of surrealism while analyzing it as a cultural movement in a broad sense. 
      The second one describes characteristic aspects of surrealism’s development in México and the autochthonous artistic background in which it assumed the role of transmitting pictorial values that blended with Mexican visual arts and produced a prolific hybridization. The combination generated unique works within the country’s socio-cultural fabric.
      In the third section, fundamented upon a feminist standpoint, although the gender concept is surpassed in determined aspects by the human dimension, the research is centered on the differences found between the patriarchal attitude underlying orthodox surrealism and the autobiographical stance maintained by the three women artists selected for study.
      The fourth, fifth and sixth sections each contain analysis of the details in paintings of these artists who manifest certain specific values or shared symbolic pictorial representations. 
      To sum up, it is pointed out that these painters linked to México are atypical participants belonging to surrealism, and that the origin of the difference consists essentially of the fact that they contributed a viewpoint reclaiming a place in art for the feminine world principally during the decades from 1930 to 1950. 


                                            
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