Installation View: Foreground: Adolph Gottlieb Tilted Wall, 1968, Robert Motherwell Untitled Open, 1971, Sam Francis Untitled SF55-123, 1955, James Brooks Untitled, 1968, Jack Tworkov Guardian 1, 1952, James Brooks Zog, 1965/66. Courtesy Leonard Hutton Galleries, photo © Brad Farwell

Leonard Hutton Galleries is pleased to present an exhibition of artworks by renowned first generation “Irascible” and New York School artists James Brooks, Willem de Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, Sam Francis, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Theodore Roszak, David Smith and Jack Tworkov. On view at the gallery from March 15-May 15, 2013.

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) Guardian I, 1952, Oil on canvas, 50 x 21 in. (127 x 53.3 cm), JT025

The Irascibles were a group of American abstract artists who, in 1950, signed an open letter, to the president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, rejecting the museum’s exhibition: American Painting Today – 1950, and boycotting the accompanying competition. The subsequent media coverage of the protest and a now iconic group photograph, that appeared in Life magazine, gave them notoriety, popularized the term Abstract Expressionist and established them as the first generation of the acknowledged movement.

Post World War II Jackson Pollock’s radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all subsequent Contemporary art. Many other Abstract expressionists followed Pollock’s lead with breakthroughs of their own.  It can be said that the innovations of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Richard Pousette-Dart, Robert Motherwell and others opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them creating a new and exciting pictorial dialog that continues to challenge and intrigue viewers.

Many of the featured artworks are from the1950’s and 60’s including an important densely layered collage from1955 by Lee Krasner which redeployed sections of discarded paintings and drawings by her husband Jackson Pollock in tandem with new design elements she added to her own studio scraps.

Leonard Hutton Galleries
Hours: Monday through Friday 10am–5:30pm and by appointment
Press inquires: art@leonardhuttongalleries.com

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) Untitled (House of the Sun), c.1952, Oil and graphite on paper, 25 1/2 x 16 in. On view at Van de Weghe Fine Art through May 24.

Van de Weghe Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of Abstract Expressionist works on paper by renowned artists Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov, Sam Francis, Mark Tobey Jean Dubuffet and Yayoi Kusama (Mar 4-May 24, 2013). The movement came to prominence in the years following World War II and is characterized by its focus on gesture and materiality, and its disregard for pictorial representation. These artists worked both in and outside of AbEx’s New York epicenter, and there is a striking range of technique and pictorial effects which points to the nuances of the movement.

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) is considered to be the father of Abstract Expressionism and had a profound influence on successive generations of artists. Gorky fled Armenia for New York in 1920. His nostalgia for the landscape and memories of his youth played a central role in his work, which is characterized by abstract passages and bursts of line and color fused with lyrical and surreal forms. Drawing was integral to his process and he made scores of them on regular retreats to his wife’s family’s home, Crooked Run Farm in Virginia, an example of which, Fireplace in Virginia, c.1946, is included in the exhibition.

The work of Franz Kline (1910-1962), Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) and Sam Francis (1923-1994) are quintessential examples of Abstract Expressionism in its purest form, though they worked on opposite sides of the Atlantic: Kline and Tworkov in New York and Francis – though from California originally – in Paris. Kline and Tworkov are both known for the energetic gesture that pervades their work. Kline’s black and white compositions are striking for their immediacy; Untitled, 1959 demonstrates the raw energy that is his signature. Tworkov’s lyrical sensibility is apparent in Untitled (House of the Sun), c. 1952, a composition radiant with flame-like hues. The work of Sam Francis, too, is marked by vigorous mark-making though his focus was on the power of color. Francis was deeply inspired by the palette of Monet, splashing and splattering his compositions with lush hues, allowing the white ground to show through. Untitled, 1955, utilizes layered brushstrokes and translucent color to create a space that is as sensuous as it is vivid.

Installation view: Jack Tworkov’s Untitled (House of the Sun), c.1952 with Jean Dubuffet’s Paysage, 1960. Photo courtesy Van de Weghe Fine Art

Other artists approached Abstract Expressionism as a vehicle with which to harness their inner or spiritual selves. Mark Tobey (1890-1976), known as the “Sage of Seattle,” was greatly influenced by Asian calligraphy and Eastern religions, converting to the Baha’i faith, which stresses the equality and unity of mankind. Tobey’s mature work is characterized by what he referred to as “white writing,” delicate calligraphic markings overlaying and animating the surface. He described this as the movement of light – a unifying force. Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) drew inspiration from the work of untrained artists who were often excluded from society and tapped into own primal energies in making his work. Paysage, 1960, is part of a group of works called Matériologies, which focused on media with no intention of objective representation. The concentrated amalgam of dots, dashes and splotches of ink makes a strong impact. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) was inspired by her own mental illness. She is best known for the dots that fill her paintings, sculptures, performances – infinity nets – which are drawn from the hallucinations that she has experienced for much of her life. Kusama moved to New York in 1957 where she produced a series of Abstract Expressionist inspired paintings. Ground, 1950s-63 is a work densely filled with multicolored dots which vibrate with a sense of movement. Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 where she continues to make work.

The works featured are prime examples of each artist’s oeuvre, and as works on paper, are essential in understanding their relative processes and motivations. The Abstract Expressionist movement can be seen as the starting point for all subsequent Contemporary Art. It was a revolution in pictorial language and its expressive force continues to fascinate. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, from 10:00am to 6:00pm, and by appointment. For further information, please contact Jenn Viola at jenn@vdwny.com

Jack Tworkov, Untitled (House of the Sun), (JT 303) ca.1952, Ink on paper, 26 x 20 inches

David Klein Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings and work on paper by the noted American abstract expressionist, Jack Tworkov. This is the first solo show of the artist’s work in the Detroit area since the Gertrude Kasle Gallery held an exhibition in 1971. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, February 2nd from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Stephanie Buhmann. The catalogue can be purchased online here.

For photos of the installation and opening visit our facebook page.

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States at the age of 13. He had early aspirations of becoming a writer but after seeing an exhibition of paintings by Cézanne and Matisse for the first time, he decides to study art. He participated in the WPA where he befriended many artists that would later become the most influential in Post-World War II America. By the late 1940s Tworkov was named “one of the most masterful artists of his generation” by the critic Thomas B. Hess. His gestural paintings of the 1950’s along with Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline formed the basis for the abstract expressionist movement in the United States.

A majority of the works on view in this special exhibition date from 1948-1953 when Tworkov and Willem de Kooning had studios across the hall from one another on the second floor of 45 Fourth Avenue in downtown New York City. It was a vital time for both artists, which saw an equal critical exchange of ideas about abstraction between both artists.

In an interview with Phyllis Tuchman published in Artforum magazine in 1971, Tworkov stated: “I think that it’s a very important aspect of an artist’s work to learn from the unexpected, to learn from accident. But I believe for myself in a kind of reconciliation between that and thoughtfulness…I think that both are integral processes, that the problem is to keep the painting open to both impulses.”

Jack Tworkov was a founding member of the New York School and his work is in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Detroit Institute of Art to name a few. Solo exhibition of Tworkov’s work have been mounted by the Baltimore Museum of Art (’48), the Walker Art Center (’57), The Whitney Museum of American Art (’64, ’71), the Toledo Museum of Art (’71), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (’82), the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2010), and most recently The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (2011).

For further information please contact:

Christine Schefman, Director
David Klein Gallery
163 Townsend, Birmingham, MI 48009
248-433-3700 / Christine@dkgallery.com
Hours:  11:00 – 5:30, Monday – Saturday
www.dkgallery.com

Jack Tworkov, “TL#3,”Lithograph, 1977, signed, dated, titled and numbered from the edition of 10, printed at Tamarind Institute, with blindstamp in the lower-left sheet corner (and also that of the collaborating master printer), on Arches paper, printed to the edge of the sheet, sheet size: 26 x 26 inches. Available through Francis Frost.

The Estate of Jack Tworkov is pleased to announce a new relationship with Francis Frost who will now represent the Estate in offering for sale the lithographs, etchings and silkscreens of Jack Tworkov. This marks the first concerted effort to make this rare material available to the public.

Jack Tworkov began making prints in the mid-1960s. Experimenting over the years with a range of different print processes, he continued to make prints until his death in 1982, creating twenty-six works in total (of which nineteen will be available for sale). Many of these works were printed in small editions and consequently rarely appear on the market.

Tworkov’s first prints were a series of five black and white lithographs printed in 1965 at Hollander Workshop on Tenth Street in New York (where many of his peers, including Willem de Kooning, Esteban Vicente and Philip Guston had produced notable prints). The first three works in the group related to Tworkov’s Barrier Series paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s and then, in L#3 and L#4, Tworkov created prints that relate directly to themes he was working on in his paintings at that time.

Tworkov was to create series of prints until the end of his life. They mirrored directly the changes taking place in his paintings. A series of silkscreens was printed in the early-1970s that matched his densely painted oils of those years; a fruitful relationship with Landfall Press in Chicago resulted in the printing of both lithographs and etchings exploring geometric themes; and a very productive visit to Tamarind Institute in New Mexico produced a series of eight lithographs that show Tworkov’s development of variations on a theme in a series of closely-related to the paintings from the artist’s Alternative Series. Paintings from this series can be viewed through the catalogue raisonne.

Tworkov’s prints provide a condensed overview of the development of his late style of painting, which introduced a rigid geometric structure where in Tworkov continued his characteristic gestural painterly brushwork. Loose grids appeared in Tworkov’s paintings beginning in the late 1950s and  the early 1960s. By 1968 strongly delineated grids of squares and diagonals start to define the picture surface; the gestural or painterly lines and color are still present but they are increasingly constrained within the geometric framework. Tworkov had been interested in mathematics for many years, and by using simple number sequences such as the Fibonacci series he was able to use these numerical ‘rules’ as the guideline for the structure of the print or painting. In many of the prints it is fascinating to see how Tworkov utilized the different print mediums to get the painterly feel he still wanted within the geometric forms; the light red lithographic wash in the background of TL #8, the clusters of loosely etched parallel lines in Intaglio Print #1, or the smoky aquatint ground in LF-SF-E #4.

Tworkov’s prints are represented in many public collections including Cleveland Museum of Art, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, and the Tate Modern, London, among others.

Francis Frost is a private art dealer with over twenty-five years experience in the field of fine prints. After running the print department at Phillips Auctioneers in New York. He became a private dealer in 1989, specializing in nineteenth and twentieth century prints. In the early 1990s Frost maintained a gallery on 57th Street in New York, holding various exhibitions of mid-twentieth century abstract prints and drawings, and since 1999 he has been a private dealer based in Newport, Rhode Island.

Over the past eight years Francis Frost has been specializing in abstract art from the 1960s through 1980s, with a special interest in hard-edged and geometric art from the period, and has one of the most specialized inventories of this style of work. Frost has sold to many of the most prestigious museums in the country, and has worked closely over the years with countless private individuals in forming significant collections of abstract prints, drawings and paintings. His current inventory includes prints by Norman Ives, Sol Lewitt, Louise Nevelson and Paul Shore. For a complete list of available works including works by Jack Tworkov visit: www.francisfrost.com

Published in ARTnews, May 1953, pp. 30-34, 72, 73

The common question people ask when confronted with an abstract or non-objective painting is, “What is that supposed to be?” The question is, of course, not a bad one; t is difficult because fundamental. In realist art there is no problem of the subject but in abstract art the subject rules, and the question of the subject is radical. Jack Tworkov believes that “one man’s subject becomes another man’s art theory”; consider, for instance, Cezanne’s subject, his petite sensation which turns into the Cubist’s theory, or the Impressionists’ light which became Seurat’s theory as well as the theory of certain non-objective painters. To quote Tworkov directly: “If I knew what I wanted to paint, I surely would love to paint that.”

To elaborate, he does paint what he wants to paint, but he is not conscious of the desire in advance. He believes that, although creation belongs to the painter, a “true” subject is peculiar not to the individual but to his time. This era has not produced a “true” subject, as the Middle Ages had Christianity, and the Renaissance produced Humanism. Or is the subject of our time a revolt, a romanticism caused by and in reaction to that contempt for individuality which seems to be the result of the standardized society that exists everywhere? But Tworkov is less interested in revolt than in his connectedness with others. Painting is linked with what came before, and there is the fact of precedent. If one were completely free one would not have to paint. The ideas one has in revolt are shared by others in revolt. If a link is broken it is to find oneself as strongly linked in another chain. The essence of communication lies in how one is linked with another.

If the physiological function of dreaming is to permit the sleeper to go on sleeping, so the function of painting for Tworkov is one that permits him to go on painting and living, and doing something different. When the painting is done, it may be as forgotten as a dream that did not awaken the sleeper. For instance, at the end of the painting, when asked what colors were used in a certain place, he could not remember.

The subject here first appeared in a drawing made at Black Mountain last summer. He did not choose the subject but he came to know it. In mode it derived from a series of paintings he made a year before on the theme of the Odyssey, where he, partly influenced by Futurism, showed figures in definitely ambiguous space—form more than one point of view at once. As the figures began to develop, the subject tended to become erotic. This is the internal origin of the subject and also the origin of the turbulence of the form. There then begins a pull between this origin on the one hand and aesthetic considerations on the other, which set a direction toward non-objectivity.

Tworkov’s Fourth Avenue studio. Studies on the wall and on the easel in the foreground are for “House of the Sun.” Photo: Rudy Burckhardt

Tworkov has no technique of procedure in any narrow sense. The painting is not a partial or momentary record of the artist’s experience. It represents not “emotion recollected in tranquility” but emotion recollected in the act of painting. Though there are periods when the painting proceeds without a thought, mostly it is correct to say that he is always thinking about painting while he is painting. The act is conscious.

Though the subject is erotic in a general way, the particular form and the momentary form are mysterious to the artist in proportion to how deeply he is involved in the process and unaware of what he is doing. There is a difference between erotic symbol and erotic content. If the figure becomes too prominent—if he allows the eye too easily to organize the figure—there may be a tendency toward the pornographic. But a continual play of shapes may actually be much closer to his real feeling.

For Tworkov, mind includes sensation and emotion, and subjective material is not different form reality. It comes from outside, from what is called the real world. His painting is neither spontaneous nor automatic. He is not trying to be blind to what goes on in the picture. His motivation is to give concrete expression to what he feels. He keeps several pictures going, all with the same origin, and in this way finds the shapes he wants that will say best what he wants to say. He observed: “It is in the nature of painting that it sometimes takes its own bent. If something good happens, I don’t want to be blind to it. But still painting is not to be considered a technique of exploiting accidents.”

Tworkov believes in content, and the content is like a dream; if it becomes explicit, it tens to become language beyond this, primitive and rudimentary. He like neither the intimist nor the aesthetic approach, nor the approach that wants to remove more and more elements from painting—the puritanical approach found in an extreme avant-garde, which is left in industrial design, in architecture, in layout, in mathematics. “If you drain out of art the passageway to the symbol or the dream, what would remain would be anti-art.”

As he paints, while immersed in the process, involved in his total curiosity about what he may discover as the true way for the particular painting, sometimes the painting is “like a muddied pool, but sometimes it flashes back like a mirrored surface, the secret vice, anguish or joy. It is here I became conscious of  the audience; something like panic seizes me when I think someone is looking over my shoulder and I try to stir the pool up again, to destroy the reflecting surface.” This sequence can recur again and again, and it is more or less a matter of control of self-consciousness that decides the final outcome. The more relentlessly objective he is with himself, the more triumphant the picture. But when the ideal situation does not happen, that is, when the picture simply fails to come into existence, then he begins to conjure with tricks out of his past experience, using this kind off stroke, that kind of approach to line and color, until the picture starts to “breathe.” Then instantly he must abandon the devices he used and start searching for an opening so that the picture will come to life, by itself, so to speak, without any familiar device.

The monochrome, first version as distinguished from the progressive stages in the development of the picture—was not worked beyond a certain point. As a drawing on canvas it looked unfinished, so he then painted it in black-and-white, achieving a more solid result than if it had been left in charcoal. There is some red in it, an accident of the brush which he chose to balance with another spot. The forms were considered as relating to any part of the center. Arms could be considered as legs and vice-versa. There is no face because a face has too much personality, and is too specific. The forms should derive from a figure instead of referring to it. In stage1 begun before and continued after the above version, he wanted to make the form and color more concrete, less a figure than a suggestive form in itself. The problem was further to divide the canvas in such a way that it would be set in motion, not strung together in a series pieces but having a unified, not too nervous flow. He wanted to paint only where needed and to incorporate large sections of unpainted canvas as if they were painted too. In the first version there were many lines as well as a certain turbulence. The lines were there as a means of organizing the shapes, and at first there were no clear color shapes. Tworkov counts lines not as borders of things but as formal devices that can cross edges. And when line is not a contour, the picture empties out. He said, “remove the lines and make a fuller picture.” In a brimming glass you do not notice the edges of the container. When shape partakes of the quality of line, the painting becomes a drawing. But line is used by the painting when the meaning is being lost: he returns to line for clarification. As Tworkov sees it, “drawing is a not that says here I must work.” He tries lines to see what happens—in the end they may remain. But the whole history of the painting remains apparent in any case, if only as unevenness that lies under the surface layer. White is used as a way to paint out. With white he decides how full of how sparse the canvas should be, and the number of “events” or divisions. White is not negative space; it has the dual purpose of counting either as fullness or relative emptiness.

The function of color he considers to be for illumination and richness, or as another means of drawing, to establish the places of the parts. The colors are like instruments in an orchestra. They dissociate one form from another. Reds echo each other, and so with yellow, and so with blue; but a parallel red and blue have different directions in so far as they have different qualities. It is like two people who take the same journey: the qualities of the journey are as different as the individuals taking them. However, though colors are individuals, they must not be too individual, or they will break the unity of the picture.

At the start, stage 1 of this specific picture was tentative and messy, so Tworkov painting a number of separate versions, reversing the classical order of procedure by beginning the painting before making the studies. He felt that the idea had been presented poorly. The second of these separate versions benefited from the work on the painting, but became wispy. The third such version was in red lavender, all the yellows were greenish, the whites toward buff, and with bare canvas. It had an undesirable softness. The fourth version was in primary colors: red, oranges, scarlet and blue. The greens derived from cerulean mixed with white, painted over yellow. This last had freshness and pathos, a kind of helplessness, as if full of unrealized or unconscious discoveries, the implications of which were not yet know. As reproduced, it had been painted over with white until the parts separated from each other, and was in an advanced stage of remoteness from the original subject. Tworkov said this version might foreshadow the next picture he would paint after he had completed the painting here reproduced in color. It exemplifies what happens when the formal idea takes over, and was useful as a source of ideas for the original painting. Benefiting by these discoveries, he went back to the original canvas and made it flatter, as seen in stage 2 of the present painting. He scraped it and painted it over with off-white, which served to integrate it better and gave it a surface like polished chalk.

All these different pictures, painted from the same impulse, can be compared to different dances done to the same piece of music. The music is the idea, and the different variations of composition are like different choreographies. Now Tworkov had many doubts about the painting, that it was cold and perfunctory, that it was too calculated, that he was watching himself, that he was not taking chances. In the beginning it was full of potentialities, while now it had become somewhat limited, his hopes for it had not become realized. It needed to be freed.

Three weeks later it had become simpler and more painterly. He could work on it only when he felt good about it. For two weeks he had been on the verge of finishing it. The reds became deeper, but as he repainted it the stroke began to be spoiled, so he scraped off and repainting the ground a pale grey which, for Tworkov, counts as white. Then he went through a phase of disregarding the subject. The picture tended to lose its meaning, and he would start to look again for the first impulse. And as he painted, the picture grew denser so that the whites got more and more the texture of something made out of matter instead of light, and color also became material. He scraped off parts that became less dense, and in the painting they regained density. He discovered that his original purpose, to have the painting dense in the center and less and less dense toward the edges, did not work: when he insisted on it, it made the painting empty. It seemed that this was a prejudice to which he was mistakenly trying to make the painting conform.

“House of the Sun,” 1952–53
Oil on canvas, 54 x 50 in. (137.2 x 127 cm)
JT#502

The finished painting, which he titled House of the sun, took from July to October to finish. It has a balance of densities which could not have been foreseen at the beginning. IT was not made of an accumulation of strokes but of designed strokes. The strokes had direction and shape. In realistic painting the surface is simpler. And where there is no given subject, where even the subject must be invented, there is nothing outside the painter, no reference in the objective world that determines his solutions for him. To carry through such a painting is difficult in the same way that it is difficult for a child to bring himself up according to moral standards without parental guidance. When such a painting comes off, however, it has enormous clarity. It leans on nothing else. “The subject,” said Tworkov, “stays with me from start to finish.” He thinks that his next pictures will not have clearly defined elements of color. It is a relief to work on a painting with color that exists independently. In House of the Sun, color exists as the colors of the parts.

Tworkov does a lot of painting with a knife. His brushes are very good quality, and he keeps them clean and soft. He uses 2-inch camel’s hair brushes with 5 ½-inch handles, for blending or for stroking—if he wants the stroke to appear to be in a certain direction, or if he wants a stroke to move across an abrupt change of hue. This can be done on a thickish, no-yet-dry impasto. He also uses ¾-inh wide 2-inch long ox hair brushes, 1-inch wide by 2-inch log bristle varnish brushes, regular flat bristle brushes and a few sable brights ¼ ir 1/8 inches in diameter. He keeps them in a can of varnalene just above the bottom of which is a screen of hardware cloth against which then steels to the bottom below the screen. He learned this from Edwin Dickinson. His colors are Cremnitz white and all the brightest reds, blues, and yellows. He uses almost no dull colors because they can be mixed, except for raw sienna and yellow ocher to give warmth to Mars black which has the advantage of drying quicker and more evenly than carbon blacks. The colors on his glass-topped painting table are all the cadmiums, scarlet lake, ponsol pink, manganese, cerulean, cobalt, ultramarine and thalo blue, and Mars black. He uses little cadium orange and little green. His medium is a mixture of one part of stand oil to two parts of damar varnish and two parts of oil of gum turpentine. he dissolves areas to be removed with Glyptal thinner, and adds Glyptal in small quantities to the paint to make it dry faster. His canvas, 45 by 50 inches, was tacked to a wallboard easel until it was done, so that it would have a firm backing in case he wanted to scrape off at any time, and when it was finished it was mounted on stretchers, which Tworkov makes himself.

END

“Christmas Morning,” 1951, Oil on paper mounted on Masonite, 29 1/8 x 38 7/8 in. (74 x 98.7 cm), Collection of the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ. Gift of Walter K. Gutman (57.131)

The 1950s marked an important decade in Jack Tworkov’s career and in the history of American art. The rising optimism of a post war world brought momentum to the Abstract Expressionism movement in New York. Christmas Morning a work by Jack Tworkov, currently in the collection of the Newark Museum, was painted at the beginning of this critical decade. A decade that would see New York City surpass Paris as the capital of the art world.

Christmas Morning, is nothing more than a still life; a table randomly set with glasses and plates. However Tworkov, with a discerning brush and a somber palette, deconstructs then rebuilding the composition. Describing his process in his journal Tworkov wrote, “Life in the most primeval sense seemed to me precious. I had a revulsion against the intellectual in my own nature and in art. I turned to still life as a release from subject and spectacular composition.”(1) With its quick gestures in paint, Christmas Morning reflects the artist’s intention to “strive for simple statement, direct, spontaneous, enthusiastic.”(2)

The still life as a subject was the focus of much of Tworkov’s during the mid to late 1940s. A great number of examples can be seen by visiting the catalogue raisonne of works on canvas by the artist. The 1940s were a difficult time for all artists. Tworkov in particular noted writing in January 1947:

I must have had some little success—however far from the set goal—for both artists and the most ordinary persons reacted spontaneously—for the first time I had some little but genuine appreciation of my painting. It was then I thought I wanted to paint pictures people would love.

But a year later I lost myself again. Once more war talk thickened the air we breathed. Anxiety had me in its grip again. I had difficulty fighting off the pressing gloom.

On top of that the galleries looked at my still life pictures and wouldn’t touch them. I could see that some like the pictures—but abstraction and sophistication was the rage—I was too late. My painting turned to introspection—again efforts to portray the sense of being lost in a meaningless universe—to problems of form and style—the whole intellectual paraphernalia—to automatic drawing.

The crisis in my painting now is a crisis of subject.(3)

Tworkov’s Christmas Morning was purchased by the patron and collector Walter Knowlton Gutman in the early 1950s and donated to the Newark Museum in 1957. Gutman, a former professional art critic turned high standing member of the New York Society of Security Analysts, described himself in an article published by the magazine Investor as “a Proust in Wall Street.” In a profile for The New Yorker, John Brooks noted that Gutman was “probably the only writer of a broker’s stock-market letter whose readers count on him not only for financial advice but also for cultural commentary, psychological insights, and even spiritual guidance.”(4)

Gutman began collecting works by Jack Tworkov and his contemporaries, including Gorky, Kline, and Guston, in the late 1940s. “Tworkov as a matter of fact was one of the most knowledgeable,”(5) wrote Gutman, who had aspirations of becoming an artist himself and studied with the sculptor Ben Karp. It was through Karp that he was introduced to Tworkov as Gutman explains:

It was just one of those accidents that Ben was a friend of Jack Tworkov. Tworkov’s studio was in the rear of the same floor that De Kooning had his studio […] when Ben got the teaching job and moved away, he sent me to Tworkov, who had a number of evening pupils also.

I realized when I opened the door and met Tworkov’s stern eyes that I would either become a painter or not. Tworkov really didn’t have much enthusiasm for pupils.  He was much more a real painter, but like most artists he couldn’t make it all by painting. De Kooning was teaching too—at Yale once a week. One day I brought a sketch of his—it, as many, was lying on the floor. They were all beautiful. I said, “Don’t throw them away.” He said, “Do you want to buy one? I said “Sure—how much? He said “$25.” he was a little sorry later after it was framed, but even so, at that time it wouldn’t have been much.

De Kooning and Tworkov both showed at the tiny Egan Gallery, as did Kline, Guston, Nakian, and others now famous, and so in this accidental way I landed right in the midst of a great movement.(6)

A major portion of Gutman’s collection resides at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, and  includes four works by Jack Tworkov.

__________
(1) Jack Tworkov. “The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 33.
(2) Jack Tworkov. “The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 33.
(3) Jack Tworkov. “The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 33.
(4) John Brooks. “Profiles: Walter Knowlton Gutman, a Proust in Wall Street.” The New Yorker, June 20, 1959, p. 41.
(5) Walter Gutman. “The Walter K. Gutman Collection,” exhibition catalogue, 1966, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, p. 11.
(6) Walter Gutman. “The Walter K. Gutman Collection,” exhibition catalogue, 1966, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, p. 9-10.

Jack Tworkov in his Provincetown Studio, 1960 Photo: Arnold Newman, Courtesy Getty Images

The Estate of Jack Tworkov in collaboration with panOpticon is pleased to announce the publication of the online Catalogue Raisonné of Works on Canvas by Jack Tworkov. This is the first online catalogue raisonné of its kind released free to the public on the web.

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) was a founding member of the New York School and is regarded as one of the prominent figures, along with Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, whose gestural paintings of the 1950s formed the basis for the abstract expressionist movement in America. With a career spanning five-decades, this new website and online catalogue highlights Tworkov’s historic presence and significant contribution to American Art of the 20th Century. In 2009 the artist’s writings were compiled and published in the book Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov by Yale University Press.

The Tworkov Catalogue Raisonné Project is like no other of its kind. It is the first catalogue raisonné to be offered online and free to the public. It is also unique in that unlike the traditional print versions of the catalogue raisonné, which typically go out of date the moment they are printed, the Tworkov Catalogue Raisonné project as it is virtual, is open-ended and on-going accommodating new research.

The Tworkov Catalogue Raisonné is organized, compiled and edited by Jason Andrew, who has been active with the Estate since 2004. Mr. Andrew was responsible for organizing and curating Jack Tworkov / Against Extremes: Five Decades of Paintings, which was the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work ever held in New York City in 2009. The exhibition subsequently traveled to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. In 2010, Mr. Andrew organized and curated Jack Tworkov: The Accident of Choice which featured the artist at Black Mountain College, 1952. The accompanying catalogue offered an historic accounting of Tworkov friendship with Franz Kline, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Stefan Wolpe, and the young Robert Rauschenberg.

At the very core of the catalogue are the artist’s inventories, journals, and extensive archive, which was maintained throughout the artist’s life and was continued by his late wife, Rachel ‘Wally’ Tworkov. Also actively involved are the artist’s daughters, Hermine Ford and Helen Tworkov.

The online database is designed by the innovative team at panOpticon whose experience in the field of catalogue design software includes the catalogues raisonnés of Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Roy Lichtenstein, and Sam Francis to name a few.

Taking advantage of the ground-breaking features of the panOpticon content management system, Mr. Andrew, worked with the design team at panOpticon to integrate nearly eight years of research seamlessly into the new catalogue raisonné which is housed within the framework of the Jack Tworkov website. The Jack Tworkov website is designed by Goingoffscript.

The first stage of the Tworkov Catalogue Raisonné Project features works on canvas with currently over 300 works online and growing. The goal is to eventually include all works made by the artist, including paintings and works on paper. The site will eventually add correspondence, audio and video recordings, and other documentation that will contribute to the definitive statement on Jack Tworkov.

The launch coincides with the 30th anniversary of the artist’s passing in 1982. The Jack Tworkov Catalogue Raisonné Project can be viewed here.

panOpticon is proud to play a role in this important project.

The Estate of Jack Tworkov is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

“Weatherman,” 1953, Oil on canvas, 28 x 30 inches

Given the dramatic destruction brought on this week in the Northeast by Hurricane Sandy, it’s only appropriate to highlight Tworkov’s Weatherman painted in 1953 as our November 2012 featured work by the artist.

Painted during the artist’s Abstract Expressionist period, Tworkov brushes greys and whites in a composition that at once seems responsive to landscape but then seems more in tune to personal atmospheric unrest–even a reflection of the artist’s inner psychosis.

It is uncertain whether a particular meteorological event inspired the artist to title this work Weatherman, there were several great storms in 1953 that could have prompted the title.

A combination of a high spring tide and a severe European windstorm caused a storm tide (similar conditions of Super Storm Sandy) resulted in the 1953 North Sea Flood on the night of Saturday, January 31, 1953. The flood struck the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Scotland.

The 1953 Altantic hurricane season was the first time an organized list of female names was used to name Atlantic storms. It officially began on June 15 and lasted until November 15.  Several storms from this season effected the Northeast.

Excerpts from the journals of Jack Tworkov at the time may shed light on the artist’s intent (excerpts reprinted in The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov):

September 25, 1953: There is no foreseeable future. Man acts on his environment but his deeds do not necessarily accomplish his heart’s desire.

September 27, 1953: To approach the canvas without any preconceptions is impossible. Many painters approach their canvas without any preliminary drawing, or any preliminary image. Yet they each end up with a characteristic work that cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. Because they are, however freely they approach the work, already committed to certain forms, to certain colors, materials and to a certain manner of manipulation. [Franz] Klines always come out Klines and [Jackson] Pollocks always come out Pollocks…The artist who claims to work without any preconceptions wants to accomplish at least two aims:

1. He wants to empty his mind so that somehow some energy from his subconscious would take over and endow his work with an element of strength, newness, to surprise himself with, to empty his mind in order to be able to take advantage more quickly of any favorable development in the work.

2. To empty his mind so as to shake off the ideas of the work of others which are constantly present with him, in order to develop the most personal style possible.

In a word, all that the statement amounts to is that the artist has constantly to battle with his own preconceptions about painting, and with the ideas of painting by the more famous artists which, just because the artists are famous, engage him with so much more force that he is ever willing to admit.

However one approaches this painting by Jack Tworkov, the drama and impact of paint and composition is uniquely the artist’s own. To see the full listing for this painting in the catalogue raisonne click here.

Drawn from the Guggenheim’s holdings, Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949–1960 celebrates this vital period in the museum’s history leading up to the inauguration of its Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building in October 1959. In 1953,  Sweeney aptly summarized the postwar prognosis: “Yesterday is not quite out of sight; tomorrow is not yet clear in view. But the atmosphere of vitality is unquestionable.”

In the 1950s, the Guggenheim Museum’s then-director James Johnson Sweeney championed what he called the “tastebreakers” of his day—those individuals who “break open and enlarge our artistic frontiers.” This decade witnessed the revitalization of experimental art and the advent of fresh and bold styles, a shift that was rather presciently documented and examined in 1952 by French critic Michel Tapié in his book Un art autre (Art of another kind) and an eponymous exhibition. Taking its title from that pivotal study, this collection-based presentation seeks to consider the artistic developments of the post–World War II period and draw greater attention to the lesser-known tastebreakers in the museum’s collection alongside those long since canonized.

Purchase the Catalogue

View Jack Tworkov’s work included in this exhibition: “Red Lode,” 1959-60

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) “Abstract Drawing (616),” c.1952, oil on paper, 24 1/16 x 19 inches

Barbara Edwards Contemporary is pleased to present an historic exhibition of works by renowned American artist Jack Tworkov, February 10-April 7, 2012. Celebrated as one of the foremost painters associated with the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, this exhibition marks the first time the work of the artist has been exhibited in Toronto.

Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) was a founding member of the famed New York School. His seminal work of the 1950s and 1960s along with artists such as Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock, helped form the Abstract Expressionist movement. The exhibition includes canvases and works on paper from this period.

Tworkov’s career, however, did not start or end with Abstract Expressionism. His gestural paintings from the 1950s are perhaps the basis for his work in this field. Tworkov was able to defy stylistic conventions throughout his career in order to create his own unique expression. He was strongly influenced by the singular structures and figurative canvases of cubist painters such as Picasso and Cezanne. As the artist’s work became more abstract, his slashing brushstrokes were often associated with surrealism.

Born in Poland, Tworkov moved to the United States and studied art at the National Academy of Design and the Art Student League of New York. In 1963, Tworkov was elected Chairman of the Art Department at Yale University School of Art and Architecture. He was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1970, the Medal for Painting from the Skowehegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1974, and elected member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1981.

Recent major exhibitions of Jack Tworkov’s work have been mounted by ACME Fine Art, Boston in 2008; The UBS Art Gallery (retrospective), New York in 2009 (traveled to Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2010); Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York in 2009; and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, North Carolina in 2011. The artist’s work is also held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

Read the review: Jack Tworkov, by Murray Whyte, Toronto Star, Mar 3, 2012

Read the article: Jack Tworkov by Ron Shuebrook, Border Crossings, 2012