Jack Tworkov was a founding member of the New York School along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. Painting in an expressive and gestural style, they formed the basis for the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s and 60s in America.
Read MoreBorn in 1900 in Poland, Tworkov immigrated to the Unites States with his family in 1913. Intent on becoming a writer, he studied at the Columbia University. However, after encountering the paintings of Cezanne and Matisse in the early 1920s he decided to study art at the National Academy of Design and Art in New York. During the Depression, he met Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, and Pollock and together they formed the New York School style of Abstract Expressionist painting. Despite becoming engaged in painting, he continued to love the art of writing and classical myths and literature. In the early 1950s he made a series of painting based on Homer's Odyssey. In his late paintings during the 1960s his paintings appear less aggressive and gestrual than the ones he produced in the 1950s. His gestures become more controlled and he frequented a palette of dark greys and subdued pastels. These cool and minimalist geometric compositions are an antidote to two decades of gesture and expression. He persisted with this geometric style until his death, even as Neo-Expressionism began to appear in the early 1980s.
In 1964 the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a retrospective of his work and in 1971, he had a solo exhibition there. Since his death, his work continued to be exhibited.