Editing Xul Solar (section)

===''Entierro'', 1914, watercolor on paper===
[[File:Xul Solar, Entierro, 1915.jpeg|thumb|''Entierro''. painting, 1915|320px]]
After a brief experimentation with oils, Xul chose the watercolors and tempera that would become his preferred media.<ref name="Gradowczyk"/> Instead of large-scale canvases, Xul painted on small sheets of paper, sometimes mounting his finished works on sheets of cardboard. One of his early works in what would become his signature format, ''Entierro'' (''Burial'') demonstrates the confluence of Xul's internal thoughts and external influences.

The image is of a funeral procession of beings, possibly celestial, led by an angel-figure floating above the ground. The profiles of the figures suggest [[Pre-Columbian art]], and possibly an ancient Egyptian influence, as well. The angel-figure as well as the mourners have luminous peaks above their heads, in a re-imagining of [[Halo (religious iconography)|halos]]. The shapes of the peaks are repeated by tongues of fire that point up from the bottom edge of the painting. The image strongly suggests an afterworld, but it is not clear from the image whether the environment correlates to tradition Christian understandings of heaven or hell. Xul Solar provides his viewer with a new image of an [[afterlife]].

Two figures hold a shrouded corpse, which is also surrounded by flames. The hands of the corpse are folded, but above the corpse, a figure resembling a fetus emerges. That Xul uses a fetus instead of an image of a deceased person of typical age leads one to read the image as a depiction of reincarnation, representing a break from traditional Catholic ideas of life and death, and demonstrating the investigation into disparate spiritualities which would continue for the rest of Xul's life. As the figures recede in the painting, Xul reduces them to geometric shapes. The forms cease to be recognizable as beings, and then are transformed into what can be a tomb, or portal. That all the mourners are of the same color as the temple indicates that they, just like the deceased, will make the same transition someday.

Xul Solar's life during his twenties was marked by profound existential crisis.<ref name="Gradowczyk">Gradowczyk, Mario H. ''Xul Solar''. Buenos Aires: Ediciones ALBA, 1994.</ref> His writings at the time reveal a profound desire for creative expression, and a kind of angst caused by the profusion of ideas and thoughts he entertained, <blockquote>
"Dazzling light, colors never seen, harmonies of ecstasies and of hell, unheard-of sounds, a new beauty that is mine…  If my damaging sorrows are due to labor in childbirth, I am pregnant with an immense, new world!"
</blockquote><ref name="Gradowczyk"/>

Author Mario H. Gradowczyk describes Xul at this point in his life as "a visionary rabidly opposed to the canons reigning in the Buenos Aires of his time".<ref name="Gradowczyk"/>  Like other artistically inclined people of his generation, Xul sought to study in Europe, and settled for a time in Paris while it was an epicenter for avant-garde art. The city was home to the [[Cubism|Cubists]], while attracting Italian futurists, Russian artists, and participating in the dialogue about German Expressionism. There was also a fashion for sculpture and objects brought back to Europe by anthropologists and traders from African and Pacific Ocean colonies, as well as the Americas.<ref name="Gradowczyk"/>

The artistic canons that Gradowczyk refers to were propagated by the official Argentine art institutions, which favored visual representations associated with national icons.<ref name="Gradowczyk"/> Painters like [[Carlos P. Ripamonte]], [[Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós]], and [[Fernando Fader]] extolled images of pampas landscapes and rural gaucho culture.<ref name="Bastos Kern">Bastos Kern, Maria Lucia. "The Art Field in Buenos Aires: Debates and Artistic Practices." ''Xul Solar: Visiones Y Revelaciones''. Buenos Aires: Malba – Coleccion Costantini, 2005. 222–228.</ref>  The arrival of Spanish intellectuals such as [[José Ortega y Gasset]] and [[Eugenio d'Ors]] created a new discourse around art that was disseminated among writers and artists working toward an aesthetic modernity.<ref name="Bastos Kern"/>  Entierros firmly places Xul Solar as a member of this modernist Argentine movement. Rather than painting subjects recognizable as Argentine, Xul's focus is internal, painting from his own imagination. His early artistic output seems to represent the profusion of ideas and themes that grew out of Xul's contemplations. The flat shapes and bold colors used in the painting demonstrate a Cubist influence. The faces of the figures, particularly the eyes and shapes of heads can be seen as owing to the fashion for art and artifacts from Africa and the Americas mentioned above.{{fact|date=November 2024}}