November 10 - January 19, 2023
From Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino:
“Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition Xul Solar: The Wondrous Realities of Xul Solar, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for Xul Solar [1887 – 1963, Argentina], a unique representative of the vanguard in Latin America whose art is expressionist, surrealist, symbolist, and modernist. The Wondrous Realities of Xul Solar features a selection of watercolors that aim to consider Xul’s common ground to the wondrous worlds championed by Surrealism. Gabriela Rangel has curated the exhibition and written the accompanying text.
Join us for a talk with the artist Melanie Smith and curator Gabriela Rangel on Thursday, November 10 from 5-6pm and opening reception immediately following from 6-8pm.
As Rangel writes, “In 1924, Xul Solar moved back to Buenos Aires after a twelve-year period in Europe in which he traveled to London, Milano, Torino, Paris, Stuttgart, and Munich. Xul exhibited in Italy with futurist artists and often crossed paths with members of the Parisian avant-garde such as the occultist Aleister Crowley, Pablo Picasso, and Amedeo Modigliani, who drew an insightful portrait of the young Argentine painter. The return of Xul to South America concurred with the year of the creation of Surrealism, which was officially founded by André Breton and Louis Aragon as a movement that redefined realism and merged painting and literature. In Buenos Aires, Xul arrived to join the newly created avant-garde magazine Martin Fierro that gathered intellectuals and artists including Jorge Luis Borges, Emilio Pettoruti, and Oliverio Girondo and featured illustrations by Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Pedro Figari, Norah Borges, Curatela Manes, and Miguel Covarrubias. Martin Fierro, named after an emblematical gaucho, aimed to blend modernity and nationalism and art and literature, as well as intended to redefine new modes of realism devoid of socialism. After the magazine’s break up, Xul’s independent thinking detached him from further alliances.
Over fifty years, Xul consistently composed intimate watercolors with oneiric cityscapes, astrological meditations, and religious imaginaries, which granted him a reputation of a mystical visionary artist. He habitually stated that he only painted the reality as he experienced it. Solar was also an explorer of non-western cultures and an inventor of languages, who remained conceptually and ethically grounded to the experimental predicaments of the avant-gardes until his death.
In 1967, Xul’s work was included in the exhibition Surrealism in Argentina organized at the Centro de Artes Visuales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella by Aldo Pellegrini, a poet and promoter close to Breton who founded Qué in 1928, presumably the first surrealist magazine in Argentina.”
Solar’s works are represented in numerous international collections, including Cancillería Argentina – Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores Comercio Internacional y Culto, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, Neuquén, Argentina; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Arte Tigre, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Colección de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami, FL; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX.”
Reception: November 10, 2022 | 5–8 pm
Artist-Curator talk at 5pm
1506 West Alabama
Houston, 77098 TX
(713) 529-1313
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