British-born American abstract painter Gordon Onslow Ford (1912-2003) was an important bridge between the Parisian Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements, exploring interests in spontaneous creation and metaphysical ideas like the collective unconscious.

After serving in the Royal Navy, Onslow Ford departed for Paris and worked briefly with André Lhote and Fernand Léger. Roberto Matta introduced him to André Breton, Max Ernst, and other Parisian Surrealists. During this period, Onslow Ford abandoned the pictorial images of his early work and embraced psychic automatism.

In 1941, he lectured on Surrealism at the New School for Social Research in New York. Audience members included Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. In the same year, he traveled to Mexico and lived among the Tarascan Indians until 1947. “Resigning” from Surrealism in 1943, his spontaneous gestures expanded first into more studied, map-like compositions. These eventually resolved into simple geometries that led him to an awareness of line, circle, and dot as the root forms of the universe. 

Returning to San Francisco, Onslow Ford exhibited in two shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art. A solo show in 1949 was followed by his inclusion in the landmarkDynaton exhibition in 1951. In the following decades, his paintings were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum, Tate Gallery, Whitney Museum, and several other important institutions.

Over the course of his long career, Onslow Ford’s work evolved from the earthly into the cosmic. The outer becomes inner, as the constellations self-manifest in the shared consciousness, stopping briefly to mark the canvases of Gordon Onslow Ford.

“Painting in the instant is the direct manifestation of the unknown through the painter as an instrument. The painter disappears in the instant, and reappears in the painting. It is the nature of the mind to be creative.”  – Gordon Onslow Ford, Painting in the Instant, 1964

Throughout August and September, the exhibition will focus on each artist bi-weekly, providing visitors with an opportunity to delve into each painter’s theme, technique, and artistic voice. By comparing the works of these artists, viewers can gain a deeper understanding of their individual contributions to the contemporary art landscape.

This group exhibition is an engaging and insightful showcase of the diverse talent within the Findlay Galleries’ stable of artists. Whether you’re an art enthusiast or a casual observer, it’s an excellent opportunity to explore and appreciate the artistry of these contemporary painters.

FOCUS: Ptolemy Mann

British Contemporary artist Ptolemy Mann applies a unique approach to the creation of her artworks. Aesthetically, they reflect her full and deep understanding of the principles of the Bauhaus school as well as the nuances of color theory. The result is an intelligent yet sensitive approach to a process filled with detail and painstaking levels of craftsmanship. Her time-consuming and unique approach has evolved over a twenty-five-year period. Exquisite dynamics of color move across their fine surface, creating a painterly sweep. The term ‘Chromatic Minimalism’ has been applied to her work, and Abstract Expressionism and architecture heavily influence her. 

Mann has completed many site-specific art installations and has exhibited worldwide. She regularly lectures throughout the UK and abroad, writes for the magazine Selvedge, curates, and has received three grants from the Arts Council of England. Findlay Galleries is pleased to represent Ptolemy Mann exclusively throughout the USA.

“For a long time, I’ve been interested in two specific things: accidental colour and unconscious colour. It transpires that these two ideas; when filtered through the act of painting, reveal a surprising vivacity and capture a dynamic colourful moment…In complete contrast to the exquisite slowness of the woven artworks these pieces are large scale punches of spontaneous, emotional colour.

The synergy between the woven works and the paintings is striking – despite being opposites in their making process they share a surprising energy and connect to each other completely. Both techniques project light through colour and are steeped with intuitive colour theory investigations. It is the interaction between colours that makes this work sing; alongside complex tonality and saturation.” 

  – Ptolemy Mann, 2022

Schedule

Ptolemy Mann – September 16

Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach, is pleased to present the exhibition Impressionism, which explores our collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from artists including Lucien Adrion, Andre Hambourg, Albert Malet, Jacques Martin-Ferrieres, Pierre-Eugene Montezin, Robert-Antoine Pinchon, and Gaston Sébire. The exhibition showcases the similarities and contrast between both schools, from the impressionists’ depiction of the fleeting effect of light, atmosphere and movement to the post-impressionists’ symbolic content, formal order and use of color to portray emotion. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity for visitors to explore the rich artistic history of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Learn More About Each Artist

• Lucien Adrion
• Andre Hambourg
• Albert Malet
• Jacques Martin-Ferrieres
• Pierre-Eugene Montezin
• Gaston Sébire

Eugène Paul (known as Gen Paul) was born July 2, 1895, on rue Lepic, the same street of Montmartre where Van Gogh had stayed with his brother Théo. The French painter spent most of his life in Montmartre, where the Impressionist revolution, Fauvism and Cubism began.

The Moulin de la Galette, Place Pigalle and Place du Tertre were everyday sights for Gen Paul. The Bateau-Lavoir was well established as the meeting place of independent painters and writers of the early 1900s. Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Juan Gris, along with Van Dongen, Matisse, Derain, and Dufy, were among the distinguished company that gathered there, Gen Paul was no stranger to it as a young artist looking for inspiration.

Gen Paul never received any formal or academic art training, his art was influenced by his direct exposure to the innovators of Montmartre. His work was an amalgamation of the spatial breakdown of Cubism with the line and flow of the Fauvist painters, especially Raoul Dufy’s. Structurally, Gen Paul’s Cubism was less severe, less firmly organized and less sharp-edged than that of the originators of the movement. Joyous spontaneity, warm high-keyed color and fluidity differentiated Gen Paul’s application of Cubist principles to his compositions. 

From the beginning, Gen Paul’s focus was to create art. He made painting his way of life and made no effort to build a career in any specific field. Lacking an academic or professional nucleus, his was a difficult start. He began selling his work on café terraces in Montmartre for ten years, finally earning a chance to have a gallery exhibition at Bing’s in 1926. Representation by Galerie Bernheim followed along with exhibitions at Galerie Drouant-David. By the early 1950s Gen Paul was well established and had gone from a street painter to being part of the heart of Parisian art. Wally Findlay Galleries began representing the work of Gen Paul in those years and has continued to do so ever since. 

Though he was original and vigorous both as a draftsman and a colorist, Gen Paul was never a standard bearer for any new art movement. At no point was he a theoretical crusader trying to further any one style of painting. He always loved the act of painting and pursued his own work with vigorous freshness. Consequently, his paintings are spontaneous and full of verve; they are works to be savored with great pleasure.

Gen Paul died in his beloved Paris on April 30, 1975 and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre. A few months after Eugène Paul’s death, Jean-Paul Crespelle, the famous historian and specialist in the artistic and nocturnal life of Montmartre and Montparnasse, wrote that Gen Paul “was the last of the great painters of Montmartre.” His works can be found in important public and private collections in France, America and Asia. Findlay Galleries is proud to present this beautiful collection of paintings by the Last Master of Montmartre.

Tadashi Asoma was born in Japan in 1923. He studied at Saitama Teachers College, Urawa, the Bijitsu Gakko, Tokyo. In 1958 he received a Japanese Government scholarship to study painting at the renowned Parisian Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After Paris, he visited the United States and was fascinated with the American style of painting. He studied at the New York Art Students League and moved to New York permanently along with his family. In 1961, Asoma had his first exhibition in the United States at the Japan Society in New York and San Francisco.

Asoma lived in a world open to his keen powers of observation. His ideas regarding the purity and vibrancy of color showcased his understanding of the Fauves, while his use of pattern and geometric elements were a direct exploration of the School of Paris Modernist ideals. Asoma’s oeuvre covered a wide range of themes, such as his landscape vistas of the Hudson River (he lived for over twenty years in Garrison, NY), which was always complemented by his penchant for figurative compositions. Asoma found beauty through the arrangement of nuanced spaces, reflections, and patterns against brilliantly colored solid areas; through his artistry, those solid forms went from flat surfaces to becoming expanses of space.

Findlay Galleries is proud to have represented Tadashi Asoma during his lifetime and to continue showcasing his work at our galleries. Asoma’s works can also be found at leading corporate collections and museums, including the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California and Tokyo Central Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

In this exhibition, contemporary British artist Ptolemy Mann embarks on a deeper exploration of her fluid abstract forms and fluorescent palette. Building on her work with woven textile, Mann carries forward her interest in Abstract Expressionism, architecture, and color theory to large scale works on canvas and paper. She describes her process as “working with paint on canvas and paper on an ongoing series of ‘Unconscious Color Paintings’; trying to switch off that conscious, judgmental voice we all have inside and bring forth something altogether more lyrical and forgiving. After 25 years working as a hand weaver with all the technical restrictions the process entails, this immediacy has been a revelation.” In addition to international exhibitions, Mann has a multi-year installation at the Tate Modern and was the recipient of three grants from the Arts Council of England. Findlay Galleries is proud to present this refreshing exhibition as an exclusive representative of her work in the United States.

A committed and talented artist from an early age, Ronnie Landfield’s professional career as a painter began with Minimalist and Hard-Edge painting in 1965 at the age of 18. By the late 1960s, he found his passion for the lyrical abstractions of Color Field painting. These Lyrical abstractions, informed by his deep understanding of pure color in minimalist solid form, became his trademark artistic style which he displayed to great effect throughout his career. His work conjures the natural world at all scales and often reminds us of the duality of existence itself, random and planned, organic and artificial, Color Field and Hard-Edge. 

Since his first exhibition in 1967, Ronnie Landfield has enjoyed a successful and progressive career as an artist. Widely collected and critically recognized, Landfield’s work has been included in many important institutions and permanent collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art,
the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Most recently, Landfield received the 2022 Hamptons Fine Art Fair Lifetime Achievement in Painting Award, honoring his contributions and dedication to American abstraction.

Findlay Galleries proudly represents Ronnie Landfield exclusively and welcomes you to enjoy this new collection of his paintings on view in Palm Beach.

Findlay Galleries presents The Pursuit of Color, an exhibition of works by British contemporary impressionist painter Charles Neal. The exhibition explores the significant role of color in a composition and its relationship to the themes Neal explores in his works, particularly the effect of time on subject and place. In addition to paintings that capture an impressionist en plein air moment, the exhibition includes works from his Alter-Realist series. These Alter Realist paintings are wide-ranging in their application of color theory, capturing a variety of tonalities. We invite you to enjoy this exhibition of new works by Charles Neal at Findlay Galleries’ Palm Beach location.

Findlay Galleries is proud to present a selection of recent paintings by contemporary primitive painter Gustavo Novoa on view at Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach.

Visit Gustavo Novoa’s artist page to learn more about his works and artistic career. Findlay Galleries has exclusively represented Novoa’s works for 52 years, whose works can be found around the globe in numerous esteemed collections.

Findlay Galleries is pleased to present a comprehensive exhibition of Robert Natkin paintings featuring important paintings from the artist’s most desirable periods.

Natkin created some of the most innovative color abstractions of the late 20th century. Populated by various formal elements -stripes, dots, grids, and free-floating forms, his light-filled canvases are sensuous, playful, and visually complex. Natkin was the subject of a major monograph written by British art critic Peter Fuller, who aptly described his paintings as a “veil on the infinite.”

Born in 1930, Natkin studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he found inspiration in the color and patterns of Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse and drew a lifelong interest in emotional content from Paul Klee’s Oeuvre. Natkin moved to New York where his reputation was enhanced with his inclusion in Americans Under 35 at the Whitney Museum in 1960, the first of several museum exhibitions during his career. He enjoyed critical and commercial success for several decades and lived in Danbury, Connecticut, with his wife and fellow artist, Judith Dolnick, until his death in 2010.

Over the course of his long career, Natkin was widely recognized for successfully achieving his stated goal of “making paintings that are more interesting tomorrow than they are today.” His paintings are in the collections of several prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).