Esoteric Artist Featured In New Exhibition
RedNova reports on a new traveling exhibition of Latin American artist Xul Solar. This show will focus more on the esoteric, mystic, and spiritual influences of his work. It will also see the first individual American exhibition of the artist when it debuts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
“Xul Solar’s art has usually been viewed as part of the Latin American avant-garde of the early 20th century. But the curator of the Malba show, Patricia Artundo, has chosen to give equal weight to the mystical and spiritual aspects of his work; the first painting visitors see on entering the gallery is a painting Xul Solar did of his own horoscope in 1953. “His was a spiritual search, but not in a straight line,” Artundo said. “Occult sciences, the kabala, astrology, the I Ching, the tarot, Aleister Crowley they all flow together along with his vanguard tendencies and play a role in his desire to unify Latin America on a spiritual basis.” Critics and art historians often compare Xul Solar to Paul Klee, whose work he saw and admired during the dozen years he spent in Europe before returning in 1924 to Argentina. Like Klee, Xul Solar often included letters, numbers and other symbols in his paintings. The color schemes the two artists adopted were often similar too, as was the underlying spirit of their work and their interest in primitive and archaic art.”
I think it is great that mystic and esoteric art from outside the dominant Eurocentric viewpoint is getting some attention. If you have the opportunity check out this artist Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges called “our William Blake.”
No responses yet
