Jack Tworkov (1900-1982)

This work is the first painting in a group of two paintings known as the “Winter Series,” or “”WS,” which Tworkov completed in Winter 1968.
Jack Tworkov was a founding member of the “The Club” and leading artist among the First Generation of Abstract Expressionists. There is a downside, however, to being so closely identified with the ideas and concerns encompassed in a label like Abstract Expressionism. Tworkov is the rare artist who not only worked for seven decades (1920s-1980s), but managed to stay connected, adapt, and remain contemporary.
Throughout his career, Tworkov developed a signature style identified by a distinct mark. This mark became more and more analytic and abbreviated as he sought a more neutral method for creating. A method he discovered early on through the repeated mark and later through the introduction of geometry.
Note is a painting that begins the journey toward the implementation of measured structure. Tworkov craved “a simple structure dependent on drawing as a base on which the brushing, spontaneous and pulsating, gave a beat to the painting somewhat analogous to the beat in music.” He soon arrived at an elementary system of measurement implicit in the geometry of the rectangle that became the basis for composing his paintings. These measured fields offered a guide for Tworkov’s gestural spontaneous mark.