Jack Tworkov
(1900-1982)
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Born in Poland,
Jack Tworkov came to the U.S. as a young man; he spoke with a slight, but
elegantly nuanced accent which carried a hint of civilized discipline, or
control. In 1924 Tworkov was in Provincetown attending a school run by Ross
Moffett and Heinrich Pfeiffer: The Provincetown Painting Class, through
which he met Karl Knaths who became, for a while, his mentor.
Tworkov was impelled towards Cubism and Modernism, a stance that led him
to participate in the revolt against the conservative wing of the Art Association.
The revolt was lead by Moffett and Tod Lindenmuth in 1926, when it was decided
to have two events in the summer, a Modernist followed by a
Regular (read conservative) exhibition.
When Tworkov returned in the 1950s after becoming part of the Abstract Expressionist
group in New York, he was moving toward a personal mode within a style that
had become too elusive and unstructured for his point of view.
The collections painting is typical of Tworkovs work in the
1950s: a colored expanse against which fiercely brushed linear strokes hide
or cast a veil across the surface. Jack told me once how he yearned to paint
a landscape directly in nature, and Ive always seen these pictures
of his as evocations of Cape marsh-grass or reeds. But in point of fact,
this work is a preview of what was to become the magisterial painting of
the last years before his death in 1982.
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The Collection of the Provincetown Art Association
and Museum, March 3-13, 2000, The National Arts Club, New York, NY;
Curatorial Notes: Tony Vevers
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Photo by © Arnold Newman, for the article written by Robert Hatch, "At The Tip Of Cape Cod" July, 1961 issue of Horizon, a hardbound magazine.
[thank you, Jan]
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