“There is but one force of creation and the painter, on the quest of the inner‑worlds, has to enter the spirit of this universal force.” - Gordon Onslow Ford
Gordon Onslow Ford (1912-2003) was a visionary painter whose career bridged European Surrealism and postwar American abstraction. A core member of André Breton's Surrealist circle in 1930s Paris, he later became a founding figure of the Dynaton movement in Mexico alongside Wolfgang Paalen and Roberto Matta. Onslow Ford brought this spiritual and metaphysical lineage to the West Coast, where he would live for the rest of his life.
In California, he developed a singular visual language grounded in consciousness, nature, and inner experience. His paintings - radiant, symbolic, and meditative - aimed to make the invisible visible, drawing on Buddhism, Taoism, and quantum theory. His legacy includes not only a body of luminous, contemplative work but also his role in founding the Lucid Art Foundation in 1998.
His work is held in major museum collections including MoMA, the Whitney, SFMOMA, and the Centre Pompidou.