Jack Tworkov: Broad Strokes

Jack Tworkov - West 23rd - 1963 - Oil on canvas - 60 in. x 6 ft. 8 in. - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - New York, NY (click photo for larger image)Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) was a Polish-born American painter. An exponent of Abstract Expressionism, Tworkov was a founding member of the New York School, whose style was characterized by gestural brushwork.

Tworkov immigrated to the United States in 1913. After receiving a degree in creative writing from Columbia University (1923), he returned to his earlier interest in painting. While Tworkov’s early paintings reflect a profound admiration for the work of Paul Cézanne. While working for the WPA federal arts project in 1935, however, he met the painter Willem de Kooning. (Cézanne and de Kooning are both discussed elsewhere on What About Art?)

Tworkov subsequently abandoned his figurative style. After World War II he joined de Kooning and other artists, who together evolved Abstract Expressionism. By 1955 Tworkov revealed his mature style in works that are built up of countless diagonal strokes of paint, creating shimmering atmospheric fields of color. Later he replaced the multitude of flickering lines with broad strokes, such as seen in the work featured here.

From 1963 to 1969, Tworkov was chairman of the department of art at Yale University. Many of his writings about art were published posthumously in The Extreme of the Middle (2009), edited by Mira Schor.