Xul Solar
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Xul Solar was the adopted name of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari (December 14,1887 - April 9, 1963), Argentinian painter, sculptor, writer, and inventor of imaginary languages.
Life
He was born in San Fernando, Buenos Aires province, Argentina. His father, Emilio Schulz Riga, was born in the Latvian city of Riga, at that time part of Imperial Russia; his mother, Agustina Solari, came from Zoagli, Italy (near Rapallo). A younger sister, Sara, died at the age of two. He was educated in Buenos Aires, first as a musician, then as an architect (although he never completed his architectural studies). After working as a schoolteacher and holding a series of minor jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, on April 5, 1912 he set out on the ship "England Carrier", supposedly working his passage to Hong Kong, but he disembarked in London and made his way to Turin. He returned to London to meet up with his mother and aunt, with whom he travelled to Paris, Turin (again), Genoa, and his mother's native Zoagli. Over the next few years, despite the onset of World War I, he would move among these cities, as well as Tours, Marseilles, and Florence; towards the end of the war he served at the Argentine consulate in Milan.
During the war years, he struck up what was to be a lifelong friendship with Argentine artist Emilio Pettoruti, then a young man living in Italy and associated with the futurists. Also around this time, he began to paint seriously (first in watercolor, which would always remain his main medium as a painter, although he gradually began to work in tempera and -- very occasionally -- oils). He also adopted the pen name of Xul Solar. His first major exhibition of his art was in 1920 in Milan, together with the sculptor Arturo Martini.
During the years that followed he continued his travels, extending his orbit to Munich and Hamburg. In 1924, his work was exhibited in Paris in a show of Latin American artists. That year he returned to Buenos Aires, where he promptly became associated with the avante garde "Florida group" (a.k.a. "Martín Fierro group"), a circle that also included Jorge Luis Borges, who was always to remain a close friend and associate. He began to exhibit frequently in the galleries in Buenos Aires, notably in a 1926 exhibition of modern painters that included Norah Borges (sister of Jorge Luis Borges) and Emilio Pettoruti. Throughout the rest of his life, he would exhibit regularly in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Uruguay, but he would not have another major European exhibition until his twilight years: in 1962, the year before his death, he had a major exposition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.
Work and interests
Xul Solar's paintings are mainly watercolors, often using striking contrasts and bright colors, typically in relatively small formats. His visual style seems equidistant between Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee on the one hand and Marc Chagall on the other. He also worked in some extremely unorthodox artistic media, such as modifying pianos, including a version with three rows of keys.
Fernando Demaría in an essay "Xul Solar y Paul Klee" (published in the Argentine magazine Lyra, 1971, and quoted extensively at [1] (http://www.xulsolar.org.ar/xulxul.html)), wrote, "It is not easy for the human spirit to elevate itself from astrology to astronomy, but we would be making a mistake if we forget that an authentic astrologer, like Xul Solar, is close to the source of the stars... The primitivism of Xul Solar is anterior to the appearance of the Gods. The Gods correspond to a more evolved form of energy."
Xul Solar had a strong interest in astrology; at least as early as 1939 he began to draw astrological charts. He also had a strong interest in Buddhism and believed strongly in reincarnation.
Xul Solar invented two fully elaborated imaginary languages, symbols from which figure in his paintings. He was also an exponent of duodecimal mathematics. He said of himself "I am maestro of a writing no one reads yet." One of his invented languages was called "Pan Criollo", a poetic fusion of Portuguese and Spanish, which he reportedly would frequently use as a spoken language in talking to people. He also invented a "Pan Lingua", which aspired to be a world language linking mathematics, music, astrology and the visual arts, an idea reminscent of Hermann Hesse's "glass bead game." Indeed, games were a particular interest of his, including his own invented version of chess, or more precisely "non-chess." [2] (http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=XulSolar)
Outside of Argentina, Xul Solar may best be known for his association with Borges. In 1940, he figured as a minor character in Borges's fictional "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"; in 1944, he illustrated a limited edition (300 copies) of "Un modelo para la muerte", written by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, writing together under the pseudonym B. Suárez Lynch. [3] (http://www.xulsolar.org.ar/xulibril.html) He and Borges had common interests in German expressionistic poetry, the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, Charles Swinburne and William Blake, and Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism and the I Ching. [4] (http://www.2cyberwhelm.org/diversity/express/htm/Borges.htm)
External links
- Museo Xul Solar, in Spanish (http://www.xulsolar.org.ar/xulhall.html), including over 100 reproductions of paintings by Xul Solar.de:Xul Solar