Xavier Fourcade (September 20, 1926 – April 28, 1987) was a

French American French Americans or Franco-Americans (french: Franco-Américains), are citizens or nationals of the United States who identify themselves with having full or partial French or French-Canadian heritage, ethnicity and/or ancestral ties. ...

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

dealer and proprietor of the Xavier Fourcade Gallery in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Fourcade was born in Paris, the son of Jean Fourcade, a banker, and his wife, Christiane. He attended the Oratorian school of St. Martin in

Pontoise Pontoise () is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the " new town" of Cergy-Pontoise. Administration Pontoise is the official ''préfecture'' (capital) of the Val-d'Oise ''dépa ...

, going on to study at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques and the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris, although not graduating. He moved to the United States in 1955 and joined Knoedler & Company in 1966. He started Xavier Fourcade, Inc. in 1970 and became a dealer in contemporary art. Xavier Fourcade represented

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

, Raoul Hague, Malcolm Morley, Kevin Moss, John Chamberlain,

Michael Heizer Michael Heizer (born 1944) is an American land artist specializing in large-scale and site-specific sculptures. Working largely outside the confines of the traditional art spaces of galleries and museums, Heizer has redefined sculpture in terms ...

, Jan Henle,

Walter De Maria Walter Joseph De Maria Roberta Smith (July 26, 2013)Walter De Maria, Artist on Grand Scale, Dies at 77 '' New York Times''. (October 1, 1935July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New Y ...

Dorothea Rockburne Dorothea Rockburne DFA (born c. 1932) is an abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical co ...

, Catherine Murphy,

Tony Berlant Anthony Hanna Berlant (born 1941) is an American artist who was born in New York City. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a BA (1961) and MA (1962) in painting and an MFA (1963) in sculpture. He has a larg ...

William Crozier William Crozier may refer to: *William Crozier (artillerist) (1855–1942), American general, artillerist and inventor *William Crozier (Scottish artist) (1893–1930) * William Crozier (Irish artist) (1930–2011) * William Crozier (cricketer) (187 ...

and

Magdalena Abakanowicz Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz-Kosmowska (20 June 1930 – 20 April 2017) was a Polish sculptor and fiber artist. She was known for her use of textiles as a sculptural medium and her outdoor installations. She is widely regarded as one of Poland ...

. Fourcade was entrusted with the estates of

Barnett Newman Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense o ...

Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky (; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, hy, Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his ...

, Tony Smith (shared with the

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...

Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...

, and

H. C. Westermann H. C. Westermann (Horace Clifford "Cliff" Westermann) (December 11, 1922 – November 3, 1981) was an American sculptor and printmaker. His sculptures frequently incorporated traditional carpentry and marquetry techniques. From the late 1950 ...

. In 1982, Fourcade became an American citizen. He was diagnosed with

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

in 1986, and he subsequently returned to France to undergo treatment. Fourcade and Mitchell visited

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Pref ...

in December 1986 to view an exhibition of works by

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

from

State Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the list of ...

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. The trip resulted in the ''Lille'' cycle of paintings, followed posthumously by the ''Chord'' paintings. Fourcade had died on April 28, 1987, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center Mount Sinai Morningside, formerly known as Mount Sinai St. Luke's, is a teaching hospital located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the M ...

. His brother,

Vincent Fourcade Vincent Gabriel Fourcade (27 February 1934 – 23 December 1992) was a French interior designer and the business and life partner of Robert Denning. "Outrageous luxury is what our clients want," he once said. Family and youth "Born...to a fa ...

was also known internationally as an

interior design Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordina ...

er and partner in the firm of Denning & Fourcade.

References

1926 births 1987 deaths American art dealers American art collectors French art dealers French art collectors French emigrants to the United States Businesspeople from New York City AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1920s-stub