Xul Solar, The Reluctant Utopian

Xul Solar—a painter, sculptor, writer, mystic and inventor of imaginary languages—is one of Argentina's and Latin America's most fascinating and intriguing artists whose work has been relatively neglected in the English-speaking world. His case is compelling, among other reasons, on account of his peculiar urban landscapes. The article focuses on his notion of the spiritual city by analysing textual and visual material from the interwar period, and re-contextualizes his utopianism within the conceptual climate of his time, offering a reading against the grain.