Arts and Letters

For more than a generation, numbers of American sculptors have delighted in the use of stone and wood for their special properties, exploiting the beauty of the material and often allowing the form of their works to be dictated, at least in part, by the peculiarities of the particular boulder, tree trunk, or root in hand. Much that is handsome and stimulating to the imagination has been the result.

One thinks of Donal Hord as a man fascinated by his media. He chose the hardest of stones and woods, but he dealt with them in a way that was almost unique. Never did he let them tell him what to do, even when he carved direct. His concepts, while utterly appropriate to the materials, were imposed upon them by an unrelenting hand that obeyed only the intellect, and he brought out of them beauties of form and surface suggestive of the art of the Chinese carvers of jade. He loved the difficult-to-work stones—obsidian and diorite—and the qualities revealed in their polished, clearly cut shapes. Even his large work—and much of it was heroic in scale—has an ornamental quality of finish that arouses the tactile sense to an enjoyment of surfaces rarely found in monumental sculpture.

But it is not only form and finish that give Hord's work its distinctive appeal. There is immense variety and fantasy. His relatively few figures modeled for bronze display an exceptional mastery of naturalistic treatment. On the other hand, in his large stone pieces there is a glyptic interpretation of form entirely his own—at once solid and rich in detail. Many of his most charming compositions were carved in rose wood. This seems to have been a particularly congenial medium to him, permitting a lightness and elaboration that lent themselves to such imaginative themes as "Naugal in Moonlight," "Noctambulist," "The Feast Day of a Saint," and "Day of the Judases."

He was a young man when he became a carver rather than a modeler. In fact, his career as a sculptor began at the age of fifteen. Born in Prentice, Wisconsin, he received his first formal training at the Santa Barbara (California) School of the Arts. He studied modeling and wax casting under Archibald Dawson of Glasgow. Gould Memorial and Travel Scholarships took him to Mexico in 1928-29, and later to Philadelphia and New York. But he returned to California, remaining a resident of San Diego until the end of his life and making only occasional trips to New York and Italy in connection with his commissions. He was a Westerner by temperament and was a founder of the Society of Western Artists.

Among his monumental works are the bronze "Angel of Peace" in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, and the figure of "Justice" on the façade of the Los Angeles County Courts Building. He was the recipient of many honors, among which were a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1942, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1945 and 1947, the Award of Merit Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1948, and the Fine Arts Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1953.