Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari, better known as Xul Solar, was not only, in the view of many, the painter who best adapted and developed the principles of surrealism in Latin America, but he was also an inventor of languages (like neocriollo), a creator of games (such as panajedrez), a poet, art critic, inventor of a duodecimal number system, and creator of the Teatro del Destino, among other accomplishments.

Born to a Russian father and an Italian mother, he began studying architecture in Buenos Aires in 1906, but left the program a year later. In 1912, while working on a ship, he arrived in London, marking the start of a long period in Europe. He held his first exhibition in Milan in 1920, alongside sculptor Arturo Martini. Living and traveling across various cities and countries, he exhibited in Paris in 1924 at the Musée Galliéra with other Latin American artists. That same year, he returned to Buenos Aires, and in 1925, after meeting the group known as the martinfierristas (he contributed as an illustrator for the magazine Martín Fierro between 1924 and 1927), he held an exhibition at the Salón de los Independientes.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Xul Solar participated in several exhibitions with prominent artists from Argentina and Uruguay. In the 1940s, he gave lectures on astrology and subjects like “American Spiritualist University” and “Nordic Buddhist Practices Adaptable to Our Mentality,” and he also studied the Guarani language. In 1944, he illustrated Un modelo para la muerte, a work by B. Suárez Lynch (the pseudonym used by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges). By the 1950s, Xul was already renowned as a painter and thinker, holding numerous exhibitions. In 1954, he moved to a house he designed along the Luján River Delta, where he worked until the end of his life.

In 1962, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris opened a major exhibition of his works. Today, there is a museum dedicated to him in Buenos Aires. His paintings, influenced by various European avant-garde movements (cubism, fauvism, futurism, expressionism, and surrealism) and artists like Paul Klee, reflect a personal symbology. His works are inhabited by dreamlike figures, fables, and bold colors, depicting spaces filled with suns, castles, mountains, serpents, horoscopes, and labyrinths.