G. O. Ford - Paintings - Paper

This book serves as a catalog for Gordon Onslow Ford: Paintings and Works on Paper 1939-1951, a show of Surrealist works by the English-born artist Gordon Onslow Ford (1912-2003), held at the gallery Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York, 2010. The paintings in this exhibition mark the beginning of a long and distinguished career as an abstract painter. The engaging and informative text—written by noted art historian Martica Sawin (author of Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School)—begins with proto-Surrealist works made in Paris in the late 1930s and continues with important paintings made in New York in 1940, when Onslow Ford delivered a series of lectures on Surrealism at the New School for Social Research (transcripts of these lectures are published in this volume for the first time).

These works are followed by more serene visions from his years in Mexico and, ultimately, conclude with reflections of an energized nature experienced in California’s Muir Woods in 1950-51.