The Major Exhibition "Before America" in Madrid

Xul Solar and the Pre-Columbian Universe: His "Journey to the Seed"

The curator of the major exhibition "Before America" in Madrid tells how Xul Solar began his aesthetic quest in indigenous Latin American art.
Among other mythological references, the artist experienced an intense Americanist period, coinciding with the First World War.
The celebration of the Centennial of Independence across the continent triggered a search for local roots in many artists.
In the exhibition "Before America. Native Sources in Modern Culture" (Juan March Foundation, Madrid, October 2023-March 2024), we include three works by Xul Solar: "Tapestry," "Rinde," and "Mandalas." In selecting works for this exhibition, we were guided, among other goals, by showcasing works by artists with a sustained history of pre-Columbian art influence, but also by those who—such as Xul Solar—showed admiration for these currents and captured that influence in some of their works.
This also gave us the opportunity to view Xul from a different perspective, placing these works in dialogue with those of other artists from the continent who felt the same attraction to the American past.

Xul Solar is a versatile and multifaceted artist—studies such as those conducted by researchers Patricia Artundo, among others, attest to this—a significantly modern artist who knew how to find in the original American sources specific paths to resolve the eternal obsession represented by the search for a cultural identity for the continent. This "Americanist" praxis integrates with the studies Xul Solar conducted on other ancient civilizations worldwide.
The inclusion, in his distinctive iconographies, of geometric abstractions (the case of "Tapestry" is relevant in this regard, which is why we requested it for "Before America"), masks, sacred animals such as snakes, deities, and other elements evocative of ancient civilizations speak to us of that civilization.
It is no small fact that Xul Solar's works, in this Americanist vein, focus particularly on the period 1915-1930. These were years in which the Centennial celebrations and their resulting cultural assessments, after a century of the continent's political emancipation, led to a deeper introspective look, with special attention to the past.
This "journey to the seed" (as Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier would say) would be accentuated at the time of the First World War, which would mark the crisis of the until then untouchable European cultural model.

In the art world, the growth experienced by schools of arts and crafts and the so-called "applied arts" (textiles, ceramics, furniture, graphic design, stage design, among other disciplines) led, in Argentina, to the celebration of the First National Salon of Decorative Arts in 1918, with a significant and distinguished participation of contemporary artists.
If we consider the dates, works such as the aforementioned "Tapestry" (1918) and "Rinde" (1919)—the latter representing a small vase with a geometric human figure under the sun in its center, and a purely abstract composition at the base—could be understood within this new spirit of the times, marked by the construction of a modernity with its own roots.
Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales is an art historian. He curated the exhibition "Before America. Original Sources in Modern Culture" at the Fundación March, Madrid 2023. He is a professor at the University of Granada. He is a member of the National Academy of History and the National Academy of Fine Arts (Argentina).
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