Abstract

GIL, Sabrina. The Part and the Whole Latin America in the Imagination of Alfonso Reyes and Xul Solar. Lit. mex [online]. 2020, vol.31, n.1, pp.43-65.  Epub Aug 24, 2020. ISSN 2448-8216.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.litmex.31.1.2020.1152.

This essay analyzes the relations between Alfonso Reyes and Argentinean artist Xul Solar about an evocative project: an American cultural independence from the integration of the local and universal. We propose tracing imaginary lines between Visión de Anáhuac and a selection of Solar´s watercolors to focus on the updating of the American past that has been superseded by the Conquest and Colonization and the resignification of cultural tools derived from the Western tradition. Our aim is to establish a common matrix, where the interrogation of the present and the search for an autonomous art and literature favor the imagination of the pre-Hispanic past through formal experimentations, to some extent, equivalent in writing and painting.

Keywords : Alfonso Reyes; Xul Solar; Latin America; Pre-Hispanic past; Utopia; Avant-garde.