Xul Solar — painter, sculptor, writer and inventor of languages with roots in the Russian Empire
Xul Solar was the adopted name of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari, born on 14 December 1887 in San Fernando, in the province of Buenos Aires. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his father. Emilio Schulz Riga (given in some sources as Elmo), an engineer of Baltic German origin, was born in 1853 in Riga, then in the Livonia Governorate of the Russian Empire and now the capital of Latvia, and emigrated to Argentina, where he died in 1925. Music ran in the family: his grandfather Alexander Schulz was a composer, and his father played the zither. His mother, Agustina Solari, came from Zoagli, near Genoa. Growing up in a multilingual household, the boy spoke several languages from childhood.
He attended a French school and then the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires, and studied architecture for two years before, in April 1912, setting out on a ship bound for Hong Kong and disembarking in London. He stayed in Europe until 1924, travelling in England, France and Italy, studying the occult, astrology and Asian religions, and practising meditation. In Italy in 1916 he met the Argentine painter Emilio Pettoruti, and around this time began to sign his work 'Xul Solar', a name that reverses the Latin lux and combines it with 'solar', 'light of the sun', and in which 'Xul' sounds like his father's surname in Spanish.
In 1924 he and Pettoruti returned to Buenos Aires, bringing the European avant-garde with them. He became part of the circle around the magazine Martín Fierro, for which he wrote and drew, and in 1926 exhibited with Norah Borges and Pettoruti. He became a close friend of Jorge Luis Borges, with whom he spent long hours talking about books, astrology and mathematics. His watercolours, with their bright flat colours, schematic figures, symbols and written words, depict visionary worlds with intimations of pre-Columbian cultures.
He invented imaginary languages and was a self-taught designer of puppets, furniture, domestic objects, musical instruments, games and imaginary buildings and cities, and studied astrology and the world's religions, which appear throughout his work. He died at his house in the Tigre delta on 9 April 1963, aged seventy-five. His house in Buenos Aires is now the Museo Xul Solar, and his work has been shown at the Reina Sofía (2002) and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (2017).
"His father, an engineer born in Riga in 1853, emigrated to Argentina, where Xul Solar was born in 1887."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Riga, Livonia Governorate (now Latvia) — father, Emilio Schulz Riga, born 1853
His father, Emilio Schulz Riga, an engineer of Baltic German origin, was born in Riga, then in the Livonia Governorate of the Russian Empire, in 1853, and emigrated to Argentina; his mother, Agustina Solari, came from Zoagli, near Genoa.
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Riga, Livonia Governorate (now Latvia) — father, Emilio Schulz Riga, born 1853. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.