Muy Mago (portrait of Aleister Crowley) 1961

Here we see Xul Solar’s "Muy Mago," a portrait of Aleister Crowley, painted with watercolor. Immediately striking is its composition: a face constructed from geometric forms and symbolic lines which float against a yellow background, creating a sense of mystical abstraction. The artist uses color and shape to create a symbolic rather than realistic image. Notice how the facial features are reduced to their simplest forms. Solar employs lines and geometric shapes to denote the contours of the face, the eye and mouth. The red circles and floating symbols replace traditional shading and detail. This invokes a sense of mysticism. The blue circle around the neck seems to detach the head from the body, reinforcing the portrait's symbolic dimension. Solar engages with Crowley's occult interests. Solar is less concerned with physical likeness and more interested in representing Crowley's esoteric persona, presenting the portrait not as a representation of a person but of an idea. The tension between abstraction and figuration challenges our perception. It questions how identity can be constructed and represented through visual language.