Paisaje Bunti 1916

Xul Solar made this landscape, Paisaje Bunti, sometime in his life with watercolor and ink. He approaches the landscape like a stage set, almost like theatre design, with the land a kind of orange ochre color, and the sky a sort of smoky grey. What strikes me is the way he’s used ink in combination with the watercolor wash to create these strong outlines and define shapes; it is both graphic and fluid, which gives a sense of depth to the whole scene, contrasting with what could otherwise be a flat wash of watercolor. There are these two dark tree-like shapes in the foreground, almost like black paper cutouts, against the ochre land and a greyish horizon. They remind me of antennae, reaching up, or perhaps figures dancing. The way the ink outlines create a sense of shape within shapes, forms within forms, it seems as though Solar is talking to artists like Paul Klee, who also sought to access a spiritual world through his art. There’s a real sense of the unknown here; the shapes feel familiar and strange, all at once.