Versatile Blotter

Spanish-born Xavier Gonzalez is one painter who frankly admits that he takes his ideas where he finds them. "I am a blotter," says he. "I have no scruples about stealing wherever I can and adapting what I have taken to my own expression." As a result, Gonzalez has gone in for about every kind of artistic approach that has been invented: impressionism, expressionism, abstractionism, realism, surrealism. Last week at Cleveland's Western Reserve University, where he is now teaching, Gonzalez proved his versatility with an exhibition of the best of his work of the last ten years.

The 28 pictures on view ranged from gloomy and disturbing scenes of death to bright and happy still-lifes. Cannabin, done in thickly applied tropical reds and blue-greens, showed flies feeding on the carcass of a dog. Minotaur set such modern forms as radar equipment and airplane parts in a desolate, post-Armageddon landscape. On the other hand, Still-Life with Pear was as cheerful and peaceful as a morning in spring, and Made in U.S.A. expressed the hustling vitality of a city waterfront.

Though there were no surprises in his work, all Gonzalez' canvases, whether they dealt with desolation or delight, showed a firm mastery of technique and an ability to convey idea and emotion. Wrote the critic of the Cleveland Press: "Gonzalez' effortless versatility is incredible. He can do anything and do it well . . . He is a genius who will try anything--as long as it has been tried before."

Mechanical Echoes. Gonzalez has been trying different things most of his life. Born 56 years ago in the Spanish town of Almeria, he moved as a child to Mexico. He took a correspondence course in mechanical drawing, at the age of 19 got a job with a railroad. Gonzalez' job was to rush out to places on the line where a train had broken down, make a fast drawing of the defective part so that a replacement could be fashioned in the railroad shop. Gonzalez says this experience is the reason "echoes of the mechanical appear in some of my paintings."

When he was 24, Gonzalez moved to Chicago, went to night art school and worked as a daytime pants presser and railbed sweeper. He later went back to Mexico, where he taught art in public schools along with Covarrubias and Tamayo. His association with the Mexicans also had its influence on his work. Says Gonzalez: "We all came under the influence of Aztec art, Spanish baroque and Chinese and Japanese art . . . I am influenced by everybody."

Weathervane. Gonzalez also decided that he liked teaching and has been doing it off and on ever since--in Texas, at Tulane University, in Brooklyn and, since last September, at Western Reserve.

Just as he cannot be classified by school, neither can Gonzalez be pigeon holed according to subject matter or media (he uses oils, casein and watercolors). Says he: "Subject matter is unimportant. It is what you do with it that counts . . . I do not try to imitate nature but try to abstract from it what will serve to express a philosophy."

Of his resulting versatility, Gonzalez says: "I am a weathervane. I move with the winds. My expression is never of a school, but is derived from where I am or what I happen to feel."

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