Gordon, Ted
United States of America, 1924
Harold Theodore Gordon, known as Ted Gordon, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, as the eldest son in a Jewish family. Following the death of his father in 1939, Gordon moved with his grandparents to Brooklyn, New York, where he began his university studies. However, he dropped out and took a series of temporary jobs while at the same time beginning to draw – first on a restaurant’s napkins, then on pieces of cardboard at home. In 1951 he moved to San Francisco, married, and took up his studies again, which he completed in 1958. Avoiding all social relations and keeping contact with the outside world to a minimum, Gordon pursued his creative ambitions. His compositions are characterised by a compulsive need to fill in his figures with ballpoint pen, felttip pen, and coloured pencil. From 1967 his drawings began increasingly to take the human form and, later, made faces their subject. These are all in fact self-portraits, in which he explores every aspect of facial expression. Ted Gordon’s work has been shown extensively at home and abroad and is included in many prominent collections, such as that of Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Folk Art Museum, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, abcd Collection, Musée de la Création Franche and Musée d’Art Moderne Lille Métropole (LaM).
