Background

Jack Tworkov, born as Yakov Tworkovsky, came to the world on August 15, 1900, in Biala Podlaska village, situated on the border of Poland and the Russian Empire. He was a son of Hyman Tworkovsky, a tailor working for the Russian Army, and Ester Singer. Jack’s father had five children from the former marriage. The stepchildren often treated Ester with hostility.

At the beginning of the 1910s, Hyman Tworkovsky came to New York City in order to establish there the family tailoring business. Three years later, he was followed by Jack and his younger sister Schenehaia.

Arriving in the city, Tworkov and Schenehaia changed their names to Jacob Bernstein and Janice Biala relatively. Jack didn’t like his new name and had some problems to adjust to new life missing the things he used to on his homeland.

As to Janice Biala, he later became famous as an artist, like her brother.

Education

Jack Tworkov studied at the grammar school in New York City beginning in 1913. He was an advanced pupil and even skipped some grades. The same year, he started to attend the Stuyvesant High School where his mechanical drawing teacher encouraged him to attend the sketch classes after school.

In 1919, he enrolled at the night drawing class held by a sculptor near his home.

Fascinated by contemporary poetry and literature, the following year he entered Columbia University with an intention to become a poet.

While at the institution, Tworkov continued sketching with his sister and her friends and visiting many art galleries this time. The paintings by Matisse and Cézanne he saw at the Brooklyn Museum impressed the young man so much that after receiving his Bachelor of Arts from the Columbia University in 1923, he enrolled at the classes of the Art Students League and later this year entered the National Academy of Design. It was then when he put back his original family name; modifying it a little to Jack Tworkov.

While the two-year stint at the Academy, Tworkov had been taught art by Ivan G. Olinsky and briefly by Charles W. Hawthorne who introduced the artist and his sister to the artist colony in Provincetown. Then, Tworkov took some art lessons from the landscapist Ross E. Moffett who helped him to meet Karl Knaths.

In 1925, Jack Tworkov came back to the Art Students League where he had studied for a year with Guy Pène du Bois and Boardman Robinson.

Two years later, Tworkov returns briefly to the institution again.

In 1963, the artist obtained the Master of Arts degree from the Yale University. Besides, Columbia University gave him a Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 1972. Seven years later, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence awarded the artist by the next honorary degree.

Career

Jack Tworkov began to work in New York City, and his first jobs weren’t often artistic or related to the field. During 1923, he worked as an assistant at the Remo Bufano’s Marionette Theatre and collected such odd jobs as a cutter, packer, books salesman, skate salesman and others.

Since 1926, Tworkov had participated at the group exhibitions of Provincetown Art Association with which he would collaborate through 1931. He had worked again as an assistant from 1927 till 1928, this time for John Dos Passos’ Playwrights Theatre. The artist took part at the shows organized by the New England Society of Contemporary Art, by Société Anonyme in New York and by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia a couple of following years. Tworkov’s figures, still lifes and landscapes of this period were similar to his favourite Cézanne. The influence continues into the next decade.

At the outbreak of the Great Depression, Jack Tworkov began to work under government subsidy, occupying the teacher’s post at Fieldston School of Ethical Culture in New York City in 1931. In a couple of years, he joined the artists from the United States Treasury Department Federal Art Project of the WPA, among who were Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. The latter, as one of the first painters representing Abstract Expressionism in America, influenced Tworkov's art which began to adopt the first elements of the movement and became his lifelong friend.

The first year of the new decade, Tworkov had his debut personal exhibition at the ACA Gallery in New York City. In 1941, the artist left the WPA Federal Project and participated at two exhibitions held at the at Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

From 1942 until 1945, Jack Tworkov stopped his painting activity and began working as a tool designer for the Eastern Engineering Company. The only artist with who Tworkov contacted was de Kooning. At the end of the war conflict, Tworkov experimented with automatic drawing.

In the post-war period, he rented a studio in New York City along with his colleague Donald Cole where he tried to apply abstraction on the figures on his canvases. The Charles Egan Gallery in New York City hosted the personal exhibition of the artist in 1947.

The next year became full of events for Tworkov. Firstly, he joined the teacher’s staff of two educational institutions, the Queens College’s School of General Studies where he had remained until 1955 and the American University, Washington, D.C. (till 1951). He participated at many exhibitions, including the shows at the Forty-third Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Sixth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and at Pan American Union. Besides, the artist tried his hand as an author and published his debut critical writing called ‘Process in Art’ in the Right Angle journal.

The following year, together with such abstract painters as Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Jack Tworkov founded the Eighth Street Club which led to the appearance of the New York School. Till 1955, Tworkov had participated at the meetings of the Club.

By this time, he finally developed his mature style characterized by flame-like brushstrokes placed into a grid. Nevertheless, his painting manner didn’t stop to change into the decade and soon form and figure became one unit. Tworkov continued to earn his living by teaching and had some solo and group exhibitions during this period, including Documenta of 1958 in Kassel, Germany.

During the 1960s, Tworkov shifted to straight lines and geometry.

After working in multiple universities around the United States as a visiting artist, he accepted the invitation to chair the Art Department of the Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture in 1963. While his six-year stint at the university, the artist contributed to its development inviting to teach many famous artists, among who were Bernard Chaet, Lester Johnson, George Wardlaw and others. Besides, he transmitted his knowledge to the young generation of painters represented by Chuck Close, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves, Rackstraw Downes and Brice Marden.

For the remainder of his career, Tworkov pursued his teaching activity around the country and abroad (American Academy in Rome, 1972) and had a lot of exhibitions as well, including the shows travelling to the United Kingdom. The last huge retrospective of his artworks while alive took place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York City in 1982.

The same year, shortly before his death, Jack Tworkov started his last painting, ‘Compression and Expansion of the Square’.

Achievements

• Jack Tworkov was a prolific painter who made a great contribution to the formation and development of the Abstract Expressionism in the middle of the 20th century.
  
  He was among the founding members of the Eighth Street Club and the New York School.
  
  Besides, Tworkov showed himself as an influential teacher who supported and encouraged many young artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra, Robert Mangold, and Brice Marden.
  
  Tworkov’s educational and artistic genius was marked by such prestigious awards, as William A. Clark Prize and the Corcoran Gallery of Art Gold Medal from Corcoran Gallery of Art, Distinguished Teaching Art Award from College Art Association of America and Painter of the Year Award from Skowhegan School of Art. Besides, he was a recipient of the Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and was named Emeritus William C. Leffingwell Professor of Painting by Yale University School of Art.
  
  Nowadays, the heritage of Jack Tworkov is included in the public collections of many well-known art galleries, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis among others.
  
  Many exhibitions were organized in the artist’s honour after his death, the most important of which were held at the Provincetown Art Association, at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, both in 1983, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1987, at the American Contemporary Art Gallery in Munich, Germany.
  
  The book ‘Extreme of the Middle: Writings by Jack Tworkov’ dedicated to Jack Tworkov was published by Yale University Press in 2009.
  
  In 2005, the artist’s canvases titled ‘'Watergame’ was purchased at Christie's in New York City for $396,800.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Trace

  • Red Robe

  • Crossfield I

  • Untitled

  • Indian Red Series I

  • Untitled

  • Q1 75 S#2

  • Choir

  • Brake III

  • Day’s End

  • Blue Note

  • June 21

  • Untitled

  • Pink Mississippi

  • Nightfall

  • Weatherman

  • Flowering White

  • RWB #2

  • Thursday

  • Study for Transverse

  • Blue Still Life

  • Dayround

  • Still Life with Fruit

  • Bar Decoration I

  • Untitled, Excavation

  • Study for ‘Watergame’

  • A on P #1 Q2-82

  • Nausicaa

  • Knight Series A.O.P #2

  • Reclining Nude Model

Views

Quotations: "The essence of our new art is that instead of being a representation of an experience, the painting is the experience itself."

Membership

• American Academy of Arts and Letters , United States

  1981

• National Endowment for the Arts , United States

  1970

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Tworkov, one of the original Abstract Expressionists whose mark on the history of painting is inexpugnable, accomplished a great deal in a long and rich life, not only as an artist but as a teacher and a mensch. And his writings are a considerable contribution to the art history of his time. Their subject is not so much aesthetics or form as the ethics of art." Barry Schwabsky, art critic
  
  "Tworkov... an important figure of the maturation of abstract art in America." Richard Armstrong, museum director
  
  "Tworkov is one of the masterful artists of his generation." Thomas B. Hess, art historian
  
  "Jack Tworkov was a free thinker in an ideological time." Mark Stevens, writer

Interests

• Freudian theory

Connections

Jack Tworkov was married three times.

In the early 1920s, his first wife became Grace Pfieffer. They had lived together till about 1923 when the artist formed the family with Florence Willison. Florence and Jack broke out before 1928.

Finally, in 1935, he married Rachel Wolodarsky who gave birth to their daughter Hermine in 1939 and to their daughter Helen in 1943.

Father:

Hyman Tworkovsky

Mother:

Esther Singer

Sister:

Janice Biala

Sister:

Celia Ferber

Brother:

Aaron Bernstein

Brother:

Abraham Bernstein

Brother:

Benjamin Bernstein

Brother:

Morris Bernstein

1st spouse:

Grace Pfieffer

2nd spouse:

Florence Willison

3d spouse:

Rachel Wolodarsky

Daughter:

Hermina Tworkov

Daughter:

Helen Tworkov

Friend:

Willem de Kooning

References

• Jack Tworkov A book by Edward Bryant
  1964
• Jack Tworkov: Fifteen Years of Painting A book by Andrew Forge Tworkov
  1982
• Jack Tworkov: Red, White And Blue The book chronicles the development of three series made between 1956-64, a time when Tworkov was represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery
  2002
• The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov The first collection of Tworkov's writings sheds new light on the lives and studio practices of the artist and his colleagues as well as on Tworkov’s artistic theories and values
  2009
• Jack Tworkov: Against Extremes. Five Decades of Painting
  2010