"[2] Her first book was Viaje olvidado (1937), translated as Forgotten Journey (2019), and her final piece was Las repeticiones, published posthumously in 2006.
[3] She studied painting and drawing in Paris where she met, in 1920, Fernand Léger and Giorgio de Chirico, forerunners of surrealism.
[12] The critic Patricia Nisbet Klingenberg maintains, however, that as a child Ocampo "lived a lonely existence, relieved primarily by the companionship of various household workers [.
She stated that Victoria's marriage had taken away her youth: "Hubo un episodio de mi niñez que marcó mucho nuestra relación.
However, like Borges and Bioy Casares, she did not have a prominent role in the decisions about the content to be published, which was a task performed by Victoria and José Bianco.
Some authors have described Ocampo as a victim, but others, such as Ernesto Montequin, have rejected this portrait: "Eso la pone en un lugar de minusválida.
La relación con Bioy fue muy compleja; ella tuvo una vida amorosa bastante plena [.
Before turning to writing, Ocampo had studied painting in Paris under the cubist Fernand Léger and proto-surrealist Giorgio de Chirico.
The book was reviewed by Victoria Ocampo in Sur, where she remarked on the autobiographical aspects of the stories and reproached her sister for having "distorted" those childhood memories.
[21] Sur played a foundational role in the life of Ocampo, facilitating her connections with Borges, Bioy, Wilcock, and others in her circle.
[23] Ocampo was somewhat less active in terms of editorial presence in the 1960s, as she only published the volume of short stories, Las invitadas (1961), and the poetry book, Lo amargo por dulce (1962).
During these years, Ocampo published the poems Amarillo celeste, Árboles de Buenos Aires, and Canto escolar.
[25][26] The publication of her last two books, Y así sucesivamente (1987) and Cornelia frente al espejo (1988), coincided with her onset of Alzheimer's disease.
In 2011, La promesa was published, a novel that Ocampo began around 1963 and that, with long interruptions and rewrites, finished between 1988 and 1989, pressured by her illness.
[30] Eminent representatives of Sur attempted to rescue Ocampo's short story collection, including Joseph Bianco, Sylvia Molloy, and Enrique Pezzoni.
Pero si lo medito un poco, diré algo más banal"[32] [I write because I don't like to talk, to leave one more testimony of life or to fight against that excess of matter that usually surrounds us.
Ocampo's habit of refusing to say much about her private life, methodology, and literature makes it difficult for critics to develop an analysis of her intentions.
In recent years, critics have rediscovered Ocampo, and some unpublished works have been published in compilations such as Las repetitions y otros cuentos (2006) and Ejércitos de la oscuridad (2008).
Due to her association with Simone de Beauvoir through her sister Victoria, Amícola deduces that Ocampo was a feminist of the French and English tradition.
[33] Established patterns are broken and roles are interchangeable; stereotypical oppositions of femininity and masculinity, good and evil, and beauty and ugliness are subjected to satirical treatment.
[33] When María Moreno asked her what she thought about feminism, Ocampo replied: "Mi opinión es un aplauso que me hace doler las manos" [My opinion is a round of applause that makes my hands hurt].
Amícola suggests that Ocampo's intention is to create child characters that aim to demystify the idea of infantile innocence.
[33] Suárez-Hernán considers that women, children, and the poor in Ocampo's work act in a subordinate position dominated by stereotypes.
[33] However, Suárez-Hernán believes that the powers attributed to the girl and her perversity generate disturbance in the reader who cannot avoid identifying with the adult woman.
[6]Another critic, Patricia N. Klingenberg, has argued that the "raging, destructive female characters of Ocampo's stories should be viewed as part of her preoccupation with the victimization and revenge of women, children and 'deviants' in her works.
"[34] Ocampo reportedly said that the judges for Argentina's National Prize for fiction in 1979 adjudged her work "demasiado crueles"—too cruel—for the award.
Some authors such as María Dolores Rajoy Feijoo interpret these reflective objects, such as mirrors and watches, as vehicles of self-reflexivity, and the modified and reproduced identity, in the fantastic tales of Ocampo: "Instead of seeing the reflected room, I saw something outside in the mirror, a dome, a kind of temple with yellow columns and, deep down, inside some niches in the wall, divinities.
[35] One of her most notable works on the theme of childhood perversion is "El pecado mortal," which recounts the deception of a girl by a servant.
[37] Ocampo uses gradual changes in her short story "Sabanas de tierra" to highlight the metamorphic process of a gardener in a plant.
Ishak Farag Fahim believes that this reflects an attempt to generalize the ideas and worldview that the story seeks to communicate.