Alejandro Xul Solar (1887-1963) – Argentinean Painter

Do you know this guy? I did not until 3 days ago, and the strange thing is that he seems quite famous.
With a musician and architect formation Xul Solar finally decided to dedicate his self to art. He had a strong interest in astrology, Buddhism and believed in reincarnation. Some people say that his work is half way between Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Marc Chagall. According to me, the most interesting part about him is that he tried to propose an alternative world by inventing new languages, games and instruments.
One of the languages is a mix between Spanish and Portuguese: Portuñol; and the other one - Pan Lingua - was a system to communicate and link mathematics, music, astrology and the visual arts. He also imagined a piano, with three rows of coloured keys. This invention aimed at accompanies his painting (mainly aquarelles) with his own music. Finally his proposed a new version of chess that is named « non-chess ».
His friend Jorge Luis Borges, who was influenced by him, said: “Xul took on the task of reforming the universe, of proposing on this earth a different order. For that, among other things, he changed the current numerical system of mathematics to use a duodecimal system, with which he painted his watercolours.”