Xul Solar - Work and Interests

Work and Interests

Solar's paintings are mainly sculptures, often using striking contrasts and bright colours, 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.

The poet Fernando Demaría in an essay "Xul Solar y Paul Klee" (published in the Argentine magazine Lyra, 1971, and quoted extensively at ), 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."

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. He also developed his own set of Tarot cards. His paintings reflect his religious beliefs, featuring objects as stairs, roads and the representation of God.

He invented two fully elaborated imaginary languages, symbols from which figure in his paintings, and 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 "Neo 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 reminiscent 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". Though as a writer Solar is most known for his invented languages, he is also the author of El Aprendiz de Tipógrafo, a collection of stories written between 1927-1940 and never published in Argentina, apparently due to accusations of dishonesty on the part of Jorge Luis Borges' legal advisor. Published for the first time in 1978 by Samsara Press as The Typesetter's Apprentice, these stories were available only in translation and in the United States but are now out of print.

Outside of Argentina, Solar may best be known for his association with Borges. In 1940, he figured as a minor character in Borges's semi-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. He and Borges had common interests in German expressionistic poetry, the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, Algernon Charles Swinburne and William Blake, and Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism and the I Ching.