GORDON ONSLOW FORD | SOWING AND REAPING

J.B. Blunk, California (acquired directly from the artist)

Rufus Blunk, California (a gift from the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Gordon Onslow Ford was born in the small village of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England. One of the best-traveled members of his circle, Onslow Ford matured among the Surrealists in Paris and the modernists of Mexico, finally moving to San Francisco in 1947 with his wife Jacqueline. There he joined avant-garde artists Matta, Sybil Moholy-Nagy and Wolfgang Paalen to found the Dynaten group, in which the Surrealist concepts of automatism and the subconscious flourished under the influence of Zen practice. Onslow Ford’s dedicated study of Zen under teacher Hodo Tobase fostered a fresh and spontaneous painting style featuring fluid, calligraphic shapes that would presage the action painting of artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,