Sólo mando

Born in Argentina and trained in architecture and music, Xul Solar became a polymath with a peripatetic lifestyle, including a long European tour from 1912 to 1924. The watercolors of miniature scale that came to define Solar’s signature style derive from an eclectic iconography that was inspired by stories and myths adapted from a wide array of philosophical and spiritual traditions spanning ancient cultures, astrology, literature, anthropology, and alchemy. At first, the artist’s delicate works depicted natural scenes, but his subject matter became more esoteric over the years, as well as charged with an increasingly vibrant palette. In Sólo mando, a human figure riding a winged mythical animal expands his arms in a ruling gesture of command. Another winged animal creature stands below with its head raised upwards. Solar’s stylized depiction of these otherworldly figures as a sequence of flatly colored geometric shapes reflects the long-lasting influence of Neoplasticism in his works. Words in Spanish scattered throughout the composition read: "rule," "inferiors," "only" and point to the cultural legacy of Futurism. In line with these European avant-garde movements, Solar’s work captures the profound cultural changes and intellectual debates that characterize the beginnings of the twentieth century, including the utopian aspirations for a new art and a new world. After twelve years of travelling between London, Paris, Italy, and Germany, in 1924 Solar sailed from Hamburg back to Argentina where he immersed himself in the local avant-garde circles of Buenos Aires, continuing a prolific career as a visionary painter, sculptor, and writer until the early 1960s.