Artist Biography & Facts

Donal Albert (Horr) Hord

Born Donald Albert Horr, the future sculptor’s mother changed the spelling of their last name when she separated from her husband in 1909. Eventually moving to Seattle with his mother, Donal developed rheumatic fever which left him with a permanently damaged heart. The doctors encouraged the youth to move to a warmer climate, so he and his mother moved to San Diego in the Summer of 1916. Being an invalid, Donal could not attend regular school so he spent time in the library educating himself in a wide variety of subject including ancient cultures, literature, music and art.

When he became strong enough, Hord began to attend craft classes at the San Diego Evening High School, studying sculpture with Anna Valentien. By the age of sixteen, he began to exhibit his work locally. A chance meeting with a young sailor named Homer Dana in 1920 had a major impact on his career. Being an invalid, Hord had little hope of advancing past the small clay figures he had been modeling. Having several interests in common, the two men’s friendship evolved into a remarkable working partnership. Hord’s creativity combined with Dana’s physical strength enabled the two to produce a truly outstanding body of work.

In 1926, Hord accompanied three other San Diego sculptors to the Santa Barbara School of the Arts where they studied bronze casting under Archibald Dawson from Glasgow. Hord obtained a scholarship to remain in Santa Barbara after the others returned to San Diego. In 19287, a second scholarship allowed him to spend a year in Mexico, a country whose ancient cultures had long fascinated him. Returning briefly to San Diego, Hord accepted an invitation to join the Contemporary Artists of San Diego in 1929, the youngest of its eleven members. Soon thereafter, another scholarship allowed him to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Walker Hancock, and at the Beaux Arts Institute in New York.

In the early 1930s, Hord started exhibiting his work throughout Southern California where it began to receive critical acclaim and significant awards. Young Maize received the purchased prize at the Southern California Art Exhibition at the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery in 1931, and in 1933 he held his first one-man show at the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, the Depression was getting worse and few people were buying art. In 1934, Hord went on the government payroll and started an impressive series of sculptures for the various public art projects enacted during the 1930s. Among the best known of these are the diorite Aztec at San Diego State University, Guardian of Water in front of the County Administration Building, and the incised relief frieze Legend of California at Coronado High School.

For the California Pacific International Exposition in 1935-36 Hord produced a limestone fountain figure La Tehuana (Woman of Tehuantepec) for the House of Hospitality. He also exhibited four sculptures at the fair’s art exhibition, and earned a gold medal for “Sculptural Excellence” awarded by the exposition committee.

Hord had married artist Dorr Bothwell in 1932, but the union did not work out. They separated two years later, and obtained a final divorce in 1936. Hord and Dana completed building a new studio in Pacific Beach in 1935, the same year that Hord began writing an art column for the San Diego Sun. In 1939, Hord began a successful marriage with Florence Silberhorn Norse, an artist who was art director for the Riverside School District.

The 1940s became a period of tremendous artistic growth and greater national recognition for the sculptor. Hord’s experiments in hard stone carving culminated in the jade figure Thunder, one of the most remarkable achievements in American sculpture. He also completed work in exotic hardwoods such as lignum vitae. During this period, Hord was named an associate of both the National Sculpture Society and National Academy of Design, obtained two Guggenheim fellowships, and received the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition, he exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and also at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Two of the most distinctive features of Hord’s sculptures are the originality of his imagery and the excellence of his craftsmanship. The imagery came from deep within, often inspired by a natural event he had witnessed or perceived. Titles such as Descending Sun, Desert Night Winds, and Summer Rain are indicative of his attempts to interpret nature’s forms, moods, and forces through idealized figures, often with strong ethnic features. Hord felt the need to work in challenging material such as diorite, jade, obsidian and difficult hardwoods. His sense of craftsmanship and quality of finish came from his training as well as his respect for ancient work, particularly the products of Oriental artists.

During the 1950s, important honors and commissions continued to be awarded to Hord. He was named a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letter, a full Academician of the National Academy of Design, and Fellow of the National Sculpture Society. The Fine Arts Medals for both the American Institute of Architects and the California Council of Architects were awarded to him in 1953. The following year he made his first trip to Europe in order to complete a commission for a bronze fountain figure. While there he also visited ancient sites in Egypt and Greece.

The American Battle Monuments Commission had asked sculptor Carl Milles to do an Angel of Peace of the American Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. When Milles died in 1955, the project was turned over to Hord, the most important commission of his career. Hord’s twelve foot tall bronze figure atop an eighteen foot tall granite shaft soars above the graves of Americans who died during the Battle of the Bulge.

A serious heart attack in 1942 had warned Hord that he was living on borrowed time, but he refused to slow down. He continued to take on commissions and in the 1960s produced enlargements in bronze of two of his earlier wooden pieces. The second of these, Summer Rain, was not quite finished when the sculptor suffered a fatal heart attack in 1966. Two years later Dana traveled to Italy to supervise casting of the piece in bronze.

(Ref. Dana, Homer, reminiscences by, A Donal Hord Retrospective, California First Bank, La Jolla, 1976; Hord Archives, SDHC; Ellsberg, Helen “Donal Hord: Interpreter of the Southwest” American Art Review, Vol. IV, No. 3 (December, 1977); Hughes; Kamerling, Bruce, “Like the Ancients, The Art of Donal Hord” JSDH Vol. XXXI, No. 3 (Summer, 1985); Moure)

Source:
"Donal Hord," Early Sculpture and Sculptors in San Diego, by Bruce Kamerling, Curator of Collections, San Diego Historical Society, Web, Sep. 2016

Born in Prentice, WI on Feb. 26, 1902. Hord (né Donald Albert Horr) spent his childhood in Seattle and in 1916 moved to San Diego. There he began studying sculpture with Anna Valentien. He later studied at the Santa Barbara School of Arts (1926-28) and continued at the University of Mexico on a scholarship during 1928-29. It was there that he came under the influence of pre-Columbian art and from it derived much of his later subject matter.

Following Mexico, he further studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Beaux Arts Institute in New York. After returning to San Diego from the East Coast, Hord remained a resident there until his death on June 29, 1966.

Considered San Diego's premier sculptor, his stylized figurative sculptures in polished exotic woods and stone can be found throughout the San Diego area.

Memberships
Associated Artists of San Diego
National Sculpture Society
National Academy (1951)
National Institute of Arts & Letters

Exhibitions
California Palace of the Legend of Honor 1929
Oakland Art Gallery, 1932
Hatfield Gallery (LA), 1933 (1st solo)
California Pacific Internatonal Expo (San Diego), 1935 (gold medal)
Museum of Modern Art, 1942
Metropolitan Museum, 1942
Philadelphia Museum, 1949
San Diego FA Gallery, 1966 (solo)
Calif. First Bank, La Jolla, 1976 (solo)

Collections:
San Diego Museum
San Francisco Museum of Art 
Balboa Park, San Diego (fountain)

Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Contemporary American Sculpture;100 Years of Calif. Sculpture; American Art Annual 1929-33; Southern California Artists (Nancy Moure); So. Calif. Artists 1890-1940; Who's Who on the Pacific Coast 1949; Who's Who in West, 1954; Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs (Bénézit, E); Artists of the American West (Samuels); Journal of San Diego History, Summer 1989; American Art Review, 1999.

Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here.