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Lot Essay
Joan Mitchell's Xavier exemplifies a persistent exploration of the expressive possibilities of paint, and is a culmination of her personal and professional journey. One of only a few female artists who emerged during New York's Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1950s, Mitchell was initially influenced by her contemporaries Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. However, unlike her counterparts, she was primarily concerned with recreating the sensations of remembered landscapes.
Mitchell filtered her memories of places or natural events through her emotional state and one can't help but feel Xavier represents a carefully contained frenzy, unleashed on the canvas in energetic crosshatched brushstrokes. The push and pull of the dark mass of marks at the top and surging looser yellows and blues below signal a kind of internal struggle. The panel's large scale demonstrates Mitchell's unwavering physical energy for her painting. For Mitchell, painting was 'a means of feeling 'living''. (Joan Mitchell cited in J. Livingston, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, New York 2002, p. 41.)
Mitchell always attributed titles to her paintings after they were completed, not necessarily indicating the emotional or physical landscape that shaped them. Xavier pays tribute to her New York dealer, Xavier Fourcade, who died in 1987, two years after the painting was executed. Despite failing health and the loss of loved ones, Mitchell's artistic drive never faded, producing some of her most well received paintings in her later years. With its vigorous, gestural abstraction and intense interplay of light and dark, Xavier displays Mitchell's prowess for painterly expression.
Mitchell filtered her memories of places or natural events through her emotional state and one can't help but feel Xavier represents a carefully contained frenzy, unleashed on the canvas in energetic crosshatched brushstrokes. The push and pull of the dark mass of marks at the top and surging looser yellows and blues below signal a kind of internal struggle. The panel's large scale demonstrates Mitchell's unwavering physical energy for her painting. For Mitchell, painting was 'a means of feeling 'living''. (Joan Mitchell cited in J. Livingston, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, New York 2002, p. 41.)
Mitchell always attributed titles to her paintings after they were completed, not necessarily indicating the emotional or physical landscape that shaped them. Xavier pays tribute to her New York dealer, Xavier Fourcade, who died in 1987, two years after the painting was executed. Despite failing health and the loss of loved ones, Mitchell's artistic drive never faded, producing some of her most well received paintings in her later years. With its vigorous, gestural abstraction and intense interplay of light and dark, Xavier displays Mitchell's prowess for painterly expression.