1900

Jack Tworkov was born Yakov Tworkovsky in the village of Biała, a small village on the northeast border of Poland with Russian. At the time of Tworkov’s birth, Biała was a large garrison town of the Imperial Russian Army. Tworkov’s father (Hyman Tworkovsky), was a tailor who worked for the Russian Army. The record of the exact date being lost, his father, in registering him for Public School gave the date August 15, 1900 for his birthday. This, as his mother (Ester Singer) explained, was based on the fact that Yakov was born “in the middle of the month Ellel.”

1913

FEB 17. The Armory Show opens in New York City, and with it, Modernism arrives in America.

SEPT 26. Thirteen-year-old Yakov immigrates to America with his younger sister, Janice, and their mother. Reuniting with their father, who had opened a tailor shop on Ludlow Street, and taking the name of their sponsor Bernstein, the family resides on Eldridge Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

I was born Yakov Tworkovsky. But some brother of my father’s went to America around 1890, and took the name Bernstein […] Subsequently all the remaining brothers who emigrated […] all became Bernsteins after crossing the Czar’s borders in order to prove that they were blood related to ‘person to who destined.’ Thus I left Poland Yakov Tworkovsky and arrived Jacob Bernstein. (EXTREME p.4)

Brother and sister struggle to assimilate to American culture at the turn of the century.

The first years in New York I remember as the most painful in my life. Everything I loved in my childhood I missed in New York, everything that had been painful in my childhood grew to distressing proportions […] as I had to face a new culture and adolescence at the same time. (EXTREME p.9)

Enrolls in grammar school, and skips several grades, then attends Stuyvesant High School. There, at the urging of his mechanical drawing teacher, he attends a sketch class after school. He aspired to become a poet.

1919

Begins attending an evening drawing class organized by a sculptor in a settlement house near his home on the Lower East Side.

1920

Leaves home and finds refuge in Greenwich Village. Enters Columbia College to major in English with aspirations of becoming a poet. Joins his sister Janice and her friends at their informal sketching sessions; begins an association with Lee Gatch.

In my early twenties, I became an avid reader of contemporary poetry and prose: Pound, Eliot, Frost, Cummings, Moore, Dos Passos, Joyce and Proust. (EXTREME p.9)

1921

Visits museums and gallery exhibitions of painting and ‘falls in love with the modern school.’ Visits the Brooklyn Museum and is overwhelmed by the paintings of Cézanne.

“As early as 1921, when the Brooklyn Museum staged an exhibition of French painting which included fourteen Cézanne canvases and twelve by Matisse, many local painters had been overwhelmed. Jack Tworkov for one never forgot the impact of Cézanne, whose anxieties and difficulties came to mean more to him than Matisse’s liberty and sophistication.” (Dore Ashton. The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning. New York: Viking Press, 1979, p.27)

1923

Leaves Columbia College. Jacob and Janice, adventurous and rebellious, reclaim their original family name; modifying it slightly, he becomes Jack Tworkov. Enrolls in classes at the Art Students League with Guy Pène du Bois. Enters National Academy of Design, where he studied with Ivan G. Olinsky and briefly with Charles W. Hawthorne.

JUNE. Having discovered the work of Edwin Dickinson, Jack and Janice hitchhike their way to Provincetown to meet him. There Tworkov aligns himself with Ross E. Moffett, through whom he meets Karl Knaths; Tworkov credits Knaths for his introduction to modern painting. In New York, works with Remo Bufano's Marionette Theatre.

1924

Continued classes at the Academy.

1925

Leaves National Academy of Design and returns for a year to the Art Students League where he studies with Guy Pène du Bois and spends one winter under Boardman Robinson; shares a studio with Lee Gatch.

1926

Participates in the group exhibitions at Provincetown Art Association, through 1931.

Joins the Modicut Yiddish Puppet Theatre making puppets and assisting in directing plays. For most of the 1926 season, "Modicut" became "Modjacot," incorporating the "ja" of Jack. Tworkov's "Minuet," a puppet dance set to Beethoven inspired by a Bufano piece is the only non-ethnic, non-political piece in their repertory. Tworkov leaves after only one season.

1927-28

Works as an assistant stage designer and puppeteer for John Dos Passos’ Playwrights Theatre.

1928

Returns briefly to Art Students League; joins New England Society of Contemporary Art.

At one time or another I worked as a cutter in a hat factory, at Nedicks, in a wire factory, as a packer at Stern’s, packer in a dress shop, books salesman at Lord & Taylors, skate salesman at Macy’s. I mention these jobs as sometimes-inevitable events in an artists’ career. I avoided jobs in the summertime and from 1924 went almost every summer to Provincetown. (November 1933, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellowship Application)

JUN 28. Becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States (received actual certificate of citzenship in 1933).

1929

The Museum of Modern Art is founded. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., is its first director. Tworkov sells enough paintings so as to spend the year painting in Provincetown; exhibits with Société Anonyme, New York; during this period he paints figures, still lifes and landscapes; a strong influence of Cézanne appears, which continues into the next decade.

JAN 27. Exhibits in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (the first of six Academy shows in which he would participate).

OCT 24. The New York Stock market crashes, signaling the beginning of the twelve-year Great Depression in America.

1930

APR. Tworkov's sister Janice Biala, leaves for Paris where she meets and falls in love with the English Novelist Ford Madox Ford.

1931

Gertude Vanderbilt Whitney establishes the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1931-33

Teaches at Fieldston School of Ethical Culture, New York, NY.

1931-35

Participates in group exhibitions at Dudensing Gallery, New York. Work features representational painting inspired by landscapes and interiors that push compositional abstraction.

Although I admired the modern painting of Europe, I never came under the influence of any one artist or school […] Recently I felt that most painting modern or conservative was terribly remote from conditions that were really, really affecting people’s lives. This feeling, I’m sorry to say, has not matured in any finished work, but I strongly hope it will in the next few years (1933 Guggenheim Application)

1933

MAY 25. Receives his “Certificate of Citizenship” from the United States. The certificate notes his address as 135 West 15th Street, NYC.

JUL. Brief trip to France. The first since immigration to America. Travels by train to South of France to visit his younger sister, Janice Biala, who at the time was the companion of the English novelist, Ford Maddox Ford.

1934-41

Begins working on the U.S. Treasury Department Federal Art Project of the WPA (Easel Division). Begins association with such artists as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko, among others.

1935

OCT 28. Marries his third wife, Rachel “Wally” Wolodofsky. He was first married to Grace Pfieffer in the early 1920s. Pfieffer’s family ran the Pfieffer’s Frame Shop and artist’s supply store in Provincetown out of a saltbox house next to the Unitarian Society on Commercial Street west of Town Hall. He met his second wife, Florence ‘Toni’ Willison, “in the summer of 1923, when he and Janice performed in one-act plays put on by the Provincetown Players. This marriage ended some time before 1928.

1936-38

American Abstract Artists group formed. Held first exhibition at the Squibb Gallery in New York City in spring of 1937.

1938

OCT. Participates in a group exhibition at Municipal Art Gallery.

1939

JULY. Daughter Hermine is born.

NOV. Biala, returns to New York from France; an event precipitated by the death of Ford Maddox Ford, and the heightening of the Nazi regime in France. Upon her arrival, Tworkov reacquaints Biala with his community of friends. Among them is Willem de Kooning.

DEC 31. Tworkov’s first one-person exhibition in New York opens at ACA Gallery. Critic Howard Devree remarks, “No one is likely to doubt the earnestness of Jack Tworkov…[he] is willfully crude at times and distorts to heighten his effects…Grimness is to be felt in all his work…” (Howard Devree. “A Reviewer’s Note Book,” The New York Times, January 7, 1940)

1941

Tworkov leaves the Easel Division of the WPA Federal Project and later states:

“Although many distinguished contemporary artists (among them Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Theodore Roszak) were ‘alumni’ of the WPA project, Tworkov, unlike some of the others, felt no freedom of creation under what he terms a “forced draft.” He believes that the project, with its ideology and collective thinking, acted as a negative charge that helped galvanize abstract expressionism into existence. “It was the worst period of my life,” he says, as quoted in Newsweek (August 5, 1963), “an extremely bleak, dreary, and stupid period. If I had to live my life over again on the project I wouldn’t do it.”(Current Biography. (Artist: Jack Tworkov) March 1964, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 37-39.)

SEPT 16. Participates in Two Hundred American Watercolors at Whitney Museum of American Art.

OCT 23. Participates in New Directions in American Painting at The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

DEC 7. Japan launches a surprise attack on American naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States declares war on Japan and enters World War II (DEC 8).

1942

FALL. First Papers of Surrealism show at Reid Mansion on Madison Avenue is organized by Breton and installed by Duchamp (16 miles of white string).

OCT 20. Peggy Guggenheim opens her Art of the Century with interior designed by Frederick Kiesler. The gallery becomes a focal point for émigrés. Peggy’s assistant from 1942-44, Howard Putzel, sought out young American artists who were working in biomorphic abstract style and this led to the first one-person shows for Pollock, Baziotes, Hofmann, Motherwell, Rothko, Still and Pousette-Dart.

1942-45

Tworkov, like many of his colleagues, stops painting and takes a job working in the war industry as a tool designer employed by the Eastern Engineering Company.

1943

JAN. Daughter Helen is born.

NOV 9. Jackson Pollock’s first one-person exhibition opens at Art of this Century, New York.

1944

Experiments with automatic drawing.

1945

MAY 8. Germany signs an unconditional surrender and victory is celebrated in Europe.

AUG 6 + 9. The United States drops atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

AUG 14. Victory over Japan Day. Tworkov takes his two daughters to Times Square as America celebrates victory. World War II ends on September 2. Tworkov resumes painting but only intermittently. Becomes interested in objects as a theme and experiments with abstraction based on the figure. He works out of the family’s crowded apartment on West 23rd Street, but later rents a studio on East 19th Street, which he shares with another painter named Donald Cole. Continues pursuit of compositional abstraction.

1946

FEB. The Charles Egan Gallery opens in a small space on the top-floor at 63 East 57th Street. Many artists, most likely including Tworkov, help in preparing the space for exhibition. Egan's first exhibition is a show of gouaches by a Swiss artist, Otto Botto, who had arrived in the United States in 1922.

1947

FEB 13. Tworkov is laid off from Eastern Engineering. Hoping to be rehired, he uses the interval to paint. It is likely at this point, despite the financial risk, Tworkov decides to fully commit himself to the life of an artist.

OCT 25. Tworkov’s first one-person exhibition at Charles Egan Gallery opens. Art News reports “Tworkov’s fine line, the elegant signature of each brush stroke, the isolated forms held on the surface with halos of color. Tworkov’s color [...] has a kind of magic; rich and silvery.” (“Jack Tworkov at Egan Gallery,” Art News vol. 46, November 1947, p. 42.) Tworkov continues to exhibit at Charles Egan Gallery through 1954.

1948

Becomes a part-time drawing instructor at the School of General Studies, Queens College, NY, a position he would hold until 1955.

JAN 25. Participates in The One Hundred and Forty-third Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

APR 11. Participates in The Sixth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

APR 12. Willem de Kooning’s first one-person exhibition opens at Charles Egan Gallery.

JUL. Tworkov joins the faculty at The American University, Washington, DC, returning each summer until 1951. His one-person exhibition opens at The Watkins Gallery, The American University.

AUG. Tworkov’s Process in Art, the artist’s first critical writing, is published in Right Angle. “An artist tries to maintain within himself,” Tworkov writes, “a center that is inviolate. He marks out an area from which he tries to keep out the world. It is a listening post for interior communication; his redoubt against the outside. There he brings together all the strength and original force he can to the solution of his problem.” (Jack Tworkov. “Process in Art,” Right Angle, August 1948, vol. 2 no. 5. )

SEPT. Participates in an exhibition at Pan American Union, organized by American University with the intent to circulate throughout countries of Latin America.  The exhibition opens in Puerto Rico in November.

OCT. Takes a studio on the second-floor, across the hall from Willem de Kooning’s studio, in an old storefront at 85 Fourth Avenue. When one arrived at the top of the stairs, Tworkov’s studio was on the left and de Kooning’s studio was on the right. The two artists’ close association, discussion and exchange of ideas, factor into both artists’ development well into the early 1950s. Anyone visiting Tworkov passed by de Kooning’s open door. Tworkov would maintain this studio until 1955.

OCT 22. Tworkov’s first one-person museum exhibition opens at Baltimore Museum of Art.

“I toy with the idea that maybe the only way to break down the walls of familiar experience is through a re-experience of the familiar.” (Jack Tworkov. “Paintings by Jack Tworkov,” Baltimore Museum of Art, October 22-November 30, 1948, exhibition brochure.)

1949

Becomes a founding member of the Eighth Street Club, which becomes the meeting place for the artists of the New York School. Tworkov remains active in the Club through 1954. He participates on panels and records the events and discussions in his journals.

JAN 23. Participates in The One Hundred and Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

MAR 27. Participates in The Twenty-first Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintingat the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

OCT 17. Second one-person exhibition at the Egan Gallery opens. “Jack Tworkov emerges from his third New York show as one of the most masterful artists of his generation now at work in America,” reports Thomas Hess, “the spontaneous calligraphy that loops over his waving textures has a sureness…that comes only from complete mastery… [expressed in] statements at once reticent and eloquent…” (Thomas B. Hess. “Reviews and Previews: Jack Tworkov at Egan,” Art News, vol. 48, November 1949, p. 44.)

1950

Tworkov begins to develop a mature style; spontaneous flame-like brushstrokes defined by grid.

JAN 23. Barnett Newman’s first one-person exhibition opens at Betty Parsons Gallery.

APR 21-23. Historic Artists’ Session held at Studio 35 at 35 East Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. Artists meet to discuss the current status of art in New York. In attendance are Janice Biala, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, among others. Gottlieb suggests that the artists protest the juries selected for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's national contemporary art competition.

MAY. Participates in a group exhibition at Egan Gallery which includes “expressionistic nonfigurative” works by de Kooning, “geometrical variations” by Cavallon and Albers, and “figure studies,” by Tworkov and de Niro. (Stuart Preston. “Diversity Modern: An Italian Contemporary And Americans,” The New York Times, May 21, 1950.)

MAY 22. The open letter, signed by a few of the participants at the Artists’ Session, and protesting the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its anti-abstract bias in the selection of painters for the exhibit American Painting Today 1950 is published in The New York Times. “"18 Painters Boycott Metropolitan; Charge 'Hostility to Advanced Art.'" This group would later become known as The Irascibles.

JUN 12-JUL 29.  Tworkov returns on faculty for the third summer at The American University, Washington, DC.

OCT 16. Franz Kline’s first one-person exhibition in New York opens at Charles Egan Gallery.

NOV.  Art News publishes Tworkov’s essay The Wandering Soutine (Jack Tworkov. “The Wandering Soutine.” Art News, November 1950, vol. 47, no. 7, pp 31-33, 62). The essay has a major effect on the re-evaluation of Chaim Soutine’s work as interpreted by a contemporary painter. The essay connects abstract expressionism to modern European painting and advances the appreciation of figurative abstraction of Soutine’s work among his contemporaries, especially de Kooning (see Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. de Kooning: An American Master. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 312).

NOV 25. Participates in the Fourth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA.

DEC 8. Metropolitan Museum of Art opens the controversial exhibition American Painting Today 1950.

1951

Viking Press publishes Abstract Painting: Background and American Phase by Thomas B. Hess. Tworkov’s painting Flowering White (1949) is illustrated. Tworkov illustrates children’s book The Camel Who Took a Walk written in collaboration with his life long friend, Roger Duvoisin, and published by Dutton Children’s Books (reprinted 1974 by Dutton and again in 1989 by Puffin).

Participates in a symposium at the University of North Carolina with Philip Guston, Franz Kline, George McNeil, the art dealer Charles Egan.

JAN 15. Life Magazine publishes Nina Leen’s photograph of The Irascibles. Headline: “Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show.”

MAR 17. The 1951 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Tworkov exhibits a painting titled Figure.

MAY 14. Robert Rauschenberg’s first one-person exhibition in New York opens at Betty Parsons Gallery.

MAY 21. Tworkov participates in 9th Street: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. His painting The Sirens hangs between a sculpture by David Hare and a box by Joseph Cornell. Jack Pollock's Number 1, 1949, installed vertically to accommodate the space, hung next to Tworkov's painting. Tworkov plays a vital role in organizing the exhibition that includes sixty-one artists many of which later become leaders in Post War American Art including de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, and Robert Motherwell.

DEC 26.  American Vanguard Art for Paris Exhibition opens in which Tworkov is one of twenty painters featured. Organized by the Sidney Janis Gallery for Galerie de France, with a purpose to “present to the Parisian art-going public a selection of the work of the most advanced painters in the United States,” (Press Release. Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, December 1951). The exhibition previews at Janis Gallery then travels to Galerie de France. The exhibit includes de Kooning, Gottlieb, Guston, Hofmann, Kline, Motherwell, Pollock, Reinhardt, and Tobey.

1952

The Museum of Non-Objective Painting changes its name to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Tworkov’s first museum purchase: Green Landscape (1949) is acquired by The Baltimore Museum of Art.

JAN 18. Tworkov participates in panel at the Club titled Expressionism I. Other panelists include William Baziotes, Philip Guston, Thomas B. Hess, Franz Kline, and Ad Reinhardt with Harold Rosenberg as moderator.

FEB 22. Tworkov participates in panel titled Conversation with Lionel Abel. Other panelists include Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and James McNeil with Mercedes Matter as moderator.

MAR 3. Tworkov’s third one-person exhibition at Charles Egan Gallery opens. An after party following the opening is held at the Club.

MAR 15. Participates in Twenty-third Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintingsat Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

MAY 6. Participates in the Society for Contemporary American Art Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, IL.

JUL. Visiting faculty, Black Mountain College, Asheville, NC. Begins a series of paintings titled “House of the Sun” inspired by the theme of the Odyssey. Students include Fielding Dawson, Joe Fiore, Dan Rice, and Dorothea Rockburne. Renews his friendship with Robert Rauschenberg.

AUG. John Cage’s Theater Piece No. 1is performed at Black Mountain College. It would later be recognized as the first “Happening.”

OCT 16. Participates in the 1952 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings, The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

NOV 6. Participates in the 1952 Annual Exhibition: Paintings, Sculpture, Watercolors, Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

DEC. Harold Rosenberg’s essay, The American Action Painters, is published in Art News. It is Rosenberg’s first influential essay as an art critic.

1953

MAR 18. Participates in a symposium on American abstract art as part of the 10th Annual Women’s College Arts Forum in Greensboro, NC. Panel is lead by art dealer Charles Egan and includes Philip Guston, Franz Kline, and George McNeil. Panel includes a small exhibition.

APR.  From Greensboro, Tworkov and Franz Kline return to Black Mountain College. Philip Guston joins them. At the invitation of Joe Fiore, Tworkov organizes an exhibition of drawings at Black Mountain College. The show was held in a makeshift gallery in the Studies Building and featured works by Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Esteban Vicente, and Jack Tworkov. The exhibition ended May 3.

1954

SPRING. “A new stature appears in Tworkov’s work… We confront a fully mature painter who has forsaken the interpretation of the visible world in order to discover and record an abstract reality, subtle, elusive, fragmentary, of his own making… he is at home in the realm of sensation, ambivalence, nuance.” (Sawin, Martica. “Fortnight in Review: Jack Tworkov,” (Egan Gallery), Art Digest 28(April 1, 1954), pp. 20-21)

SUMMER. Teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington.

OCT-NOV.  Visiting Artist, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. Lectures on “Subject Matter in Modern Art” on October 19.

1955 to 1960

Teaches once more at Indiana University in the summer of 1955. Teaches life drawing at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

1956

MAY 12. Mother dies.

1957

APR 15. First of three solo exhibitions opens at Stable Gallery in New York.

FALL. Teaches at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

NOV 26. Presents a lecture titled "Art Against Art" at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

DEC 1.  One-person exhibition opens at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

1958

MAR 15. Nominated to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York.

MAY. Participates in The New American Painting at the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; this show travels to eight different countries including Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and United Kingdom.

JUL. Participates in Documenta II, Kassel, Germany.

AUG. Purchases a house on the West End of Provincetown (30 Commerical Street). Tworkov and his family would continue to summer there until his death in 1982.

1959

Juror, Artists’ Equity Regional Show, part of the Second Philadelphia Arts Festival on view at the Museum (Jan 31-Mar 8, 1959). This exhibition consisted of works by artists living within a sixty-mile radius of the Museum. 1,961 entries final analysis represented the work of 237 artists. The choice was made by a jury composed of three painters: Louis Bouché, Adolf Dehn and Jack Tworkov, and the sculptor Minna Harkavy, with Henry Clifford acting as chairman ex officio. [Ingersoll, R. Sturgis, Henri Marceau, Henry Clifford, Carl Zigrosser, Henry P. McIlhenny, Jean Gordon Lee, John E. Canaday, E. M. Benson, Zulius Zieget, and Mrs. Joseph B. Townsend, Jr. "[Annual Report 1958-1959]." Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 54, no. 262 (1959): 83–84. Accessed March 21, 2020. doi:10.2307/3795112.]

1958 to 1963

Annual one-person exhibitions at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York.

1960

MAR 28.  At the invitation of Harold Rosenberg, participates in panel series Conversations with Artists: The Concept of the New, which includes Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and Harold Rosenberg at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. The event is dubbed The Philadelphia Panel.

JUL.  Visiting Artist, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

1961

MAR.  Visiting artist at University of Illinois, Urbana.

SPRING.  Visiting artist at the School of Art and Architecture, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

1962

MAR 30.  Guest lecturer at The Cleveland Museum of Art as part of the museum’s Comments on Modern Art Series.

MAY-JUN.  Travels to Europe for the first time since visiting France in 1933. Visits Italy from May 27 to June 14. He subsequently visits Florence, Rome, and Venice for the Biennale.

1963

JAN.  Recipient of first William A. Clark Prize accompanied by Corcoran Gold Medal, 28th Biennial Exhibition of American Painting, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Of the award, critic John Canaday writes: “As far as this critic is concerned, the jury must have been awarding Mr. Tworkov a service medal on the basis of good behavior points accumulated over the years, for his art is certainly as dry, obvious, and derivative as the [New York] school affords.” (Canaday, John. “Big Art Exhibitions Enshrine Tested Tastes: Two Shows Honor the Established and Traditional,” The New York Times-Western Edition, Monday, January 21, 1963).

APR 6.  Named William C. Leffingwell Professor of Painting, Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, CT.

JUL 1.  Appointed Chairman of the Art Department of the Yale School of Art and Architecture. A post he would hold until 1969.

“The respectability that the New York School of abstract expressionist painting has achieved was evidenced by the appointment, on July 1, 1963, of Jack Tworkov, one of its leaders, as chairman of the art department of the Yale School of Art and Architecture, which was founded in 1866 and is the oldest art school on any American campus.”  (Current Biography. March 1964, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 37-39)

Receives MFA In Privatum, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

1964

MAR 25. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, mounts retrospective of his work, which subsequently travels to Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C., May 8–June 21, 1964; Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, Calif., July 6–August 16, 1964; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, Calif., August 31–October 4, 1964; University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin, Tex., October 18–November 29, 1964; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minn., January 4–February 7, 1965; Poses Institute of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., February 22–April 4, 1965.

mid 1960s

A dramatic change in Tworkov’s paintings appears.  Geometric emphasis emerges; gestures become increasingly controlled. Dark grays and subdued pastels are used.

“He (Tworkov) moved away from the spontaneous automatic gestures of Abstract Expressionism and instead began to work with a more disciplined, systematic approach based on carefully thought-out geometric relationships.  This ‘diagonal grid’ as he called it, became the basic element of his work.”(Kroeter, Steven W.  “An Interview with Jack Tworkov,” Art in America (November 1982), pp. 82-87.

1967

APR 25. In conjunction with his solo exhibition at Chatham College, Pittsburgh, Tworkov lectures on “Art and Anti-Art.”

1968

OCT 10-12.  Participates in the three-day Midwest College Art Conference sponsored by the University of Minnesota studio art department and the Minneapolis School of Art. Other participants include H. H. Arnason, curator at the Guggenheim Museum; Les Levine, artist; John Hightower, head of the New York State Arts Council; Henry Hecht, assistant director of the museum program for the National Endowments for the Arts; critic Barbara Rose; Knox Martin, artist.

1969

Retires as Chair of Art Department, Yale University and named William Leffingwell Professor of Painting; Emeritus, Yale University School of Art and Architecture.

Late 1960s

Geometric structure of works based on diagonals and abutting angles; strong color reintroduced.

1970

Receives John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Award (Fine Art-Painting), New York, NY.

FEB 25. Mark Rothko dies at his own hand. Tworkov is one of the last people to see him alive and would later be appointed to the Board of the Rothko Foundation comprised of Donald Blinken, Chairman, Dorothy C. Miller, Gifford Phillips, David Prager, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, William Scharf and Jack Tworkov.

JUL. Returns as painting instructor at University of Minnesota’s Summer Arts Study Center at Sugar Hills.

AUG. Artist-in-Residence at Blossom-Kent Art Program at Kent State University alongside Alex Katz and James Melchert.

1970 to 1971

Appointed to the Museum Advisory Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.

1971

FEB 5. “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings,” curated by Marcia Tucker, opens at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

FEB 13. One-person exhibition opens at French and Company, New York, where he meets Nancy Hoffman, who is an assistant director at the gallery and would later open her own gallery.

MAR 9.  Mentor and colleague, Karl Knaths, dies in Hyannis, MA; obituary is printed in ARTnews.

MAR 26. Receives Doctor of Fine Arts, Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore. Also honored are architect Alexander Cochran, and critic Harold Rosenberg who delivers the commencement address.

MAY 1. “Tworkov: Recent Painting from the Whitney Museum,” opens at David Gallery, Pittsford.

OCT 28. “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings,” opens at Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo.

NOV 6. “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings,” opens at Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit.

FALL. Spends six weeks in Europe, visiting Pompeii. Tworkov is especially interested in the use of geometry in the Roman and Greek art of the period. Visits Arezzo to see the work of Piero. Visits Assisi to see the work of Giotto. Returns to New York on Jan 5, 1972.

1972

APR 15. “Jack Tworkov,” opens at French & Co, New York

JUN 6. Receives Doctor of Humane Letters, Columbia University, New York. Other honored include filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.

SUMMER. Artist-in-Residence, American Academy, Rome.

1973

FEB.  Artist in Residence, Santa Barbara Museum, CA.

FEB.  Winter Term Artist in Residence, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. Coinciding one-person exhibition opens at Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College.

APR 28.  “Jack Tworkov” opens at Jack Glenn Gallery, Corona Del Mar, CA.

JUNE 9.  Two-person exhibition with his student, Jennifer Barlett opens at Jacobs Ladder Gallery, Washington, DC.

SUMMER.  Visiting Artist, Columbia University, New York.

OCT 20.  “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings” opens at Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit.

1974

JAN. “Jack Tworkov” opens at American University, Washington, DC.

JAN 5. “JackTworkov: Recent Paintings” opens at Harcus, Krakow, Rosen, Sonnabend Gallery, Boston, MA.

MAR 16. First one-person exhibition opens at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York. Tworkov would continue exhibiting at the gallery through the 1970s.

MAR 18-28. Artist in Residence, Northeastern Missouri State University, Kirksville, MI. Coinciding one-person exhibition opens at University Art Gallery at Northeast Missouri State University.

MAY. Recipient, Painter of the Year Award, Skowhegan School of Art, ME. Others honored include His Holiness Pope Paul VI, and sculptors Mark di Suvero and Michael Heizer. Medal presented by Betty Parsons.

MAY. Visiting Critic, Royal College of Art, London

SEPT 28.   “Jack Tworkov: Works on paper” opens at Reed College, Portland, OR.

OCT.  “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings” opens at Portland Center for the Arts. Tworkov offers informal talks during a four-day stay. He tells the Oregonian he is not “comfortable with a painting that is too aggressively stated” or in fact with any “extreme portrayals.” (The Sunday Oregonian, October 6, 1974).

NOV 30.  “Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings” opens at List Gallery, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.

1975 to 1976

Appointed Andrew Carnegie Visiting Professor of Art, Cooper Union School of Art, New York.

1975

Visiting Professor, New York Studio School, New York.

JUL. Visiting Faculty, Summer Art Program at Skidmore College. Other on faculty include Lynda Benglis and Edd Burke.

AUG. Juror, Seattle Arts Festival, Seattle, WA.

NOV. Opens new exhibition of paintings at Nancy Hoffman Gallery. The show features the artist’s “Knight Series” and an ambitious three paneled painting titled “Triptych.”

NOV 11. “Jack Tworkov: Paintings and Drawing, 1968-1975” opens at The New Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, November 11-December 6 (exhibition travels to Sullivant Gallery, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, January 6-February 7, 1976; Kilcawley Center Art Gallery, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, February 11-March 9; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, March 15-April 29).

NOV 8.  “Jack Tworkov: 75th Birthday Exhibition” opens at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York.

1976

Recipient, Distinguished Teaching Art Award, College Art Association of America, New York.

APR 12. Jack Tworkov: Recent Paintings and Drawings opens at John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

MAY.  Exhibits in The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America, 1876-1976, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.

NOV 29-DEC 9. Artist in Residence, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Presents a lecture on December 7.

WINTER. Visiting Artist, University of California, Santa Barbara.

1978

NOV 28. Lectures at Montclair Art Museum, NJ, as part of The Artist Speaks Series.

1979

SPRING. Visiting Artist, California State University, Long Beach, CA. A concurrent exhibition is held at Jan Baum-Iris Silverman Gallery.

MAY. One-person exhibition Jack Tworkov: Paintings 1950-1978 opens at Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, show travels throughout Scotland and England.

NOV 12-14. Visiting Artist, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA.

NOV 28. Lecturer, The Artist Speaks Lecture Series, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY.

JAN 22-FEB 11. Guest Artist in Residence, The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, CA. A concurrent exhibition is held at Jan Baum-Iris Silverman Gallery.

MAY 18. Jack Tworkov: Paintings 1950-1978 opens at Third Eye Centre Glasgow. Exhibition travels to Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, June 23–14, 1979; Academy Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom, August 3–31, 1979; Ulster Museum, Belfast, Ireland, October 4–November 4, 1979; Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom, November 16–December 14, 1979.

MAY 26.  Awarded Honorary Degree, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Others honored included photographer Harry Callahan, an expert of Eskimo Art historian James Houston, and patron of the arts Selma Pilavin Robinson.

NOV 12-14. Visiting Artist, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA.

1981

MAY 20. Elected member American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York.

1982

Begins work on his last painting: Compression and Expansion of the Square.

MAR. Designs poster for the 1982 Chicago International Art Exhibition.

APR. Jack Tworkov: Fifteen Years of Painting opens at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY.

SEPT 4.  Tworkov dies at his home in Provincetown, MA.  Obituary written by Michael Brenson appears in The New York Times.

1983

JUL. Provincetown Art Association opens Jack Tworkov: In Memoriam, at Richmond Gallery, Provincetown, MA.

NOV. Jack Tworkov a Memorial Exhibition opens at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY.

1985

APR. Adams Middleton Gallery opens a retrospective exhibition titled Jack Tworkov: 1900-1982, Dallas, TX.

1987

JAN 30. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts mounts retrospective Jack Tworkov: Paintings, 1928-1982, Philadelphia, PA. Exhibition is curated by Richard Armstrong.

1990 to 1995

Annual one-person exhibitions, André Emmerich Gallery, New York.

1991

FEB 7. André Emmerich Gallery opens exhibition Jack Tworkov: Paintings from 1930 to 1981, New York, NY.

MAY 28. Tworkov's wife, Rachel 'Wally' Tworkov dies.

1994

FEB 2. Jack Tworkov, 1935-1982: An Abstract Expressionist Inventing Form, curated by Alston Conley, opens at Boston College Museum of Art, Chestnut Hill, MA.

2000

Annual one-person exhibitions, Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery, New York.

JUN. American Contemporary Art Gallery opens Jack Tworkov: Works from 1940-1966, Munich, Germany. This is marks the first one-person exhibition of the artists work in Germany.

2005

Exhibits in Ecole de New York: Expressionnisme abstrait Americain, Musee d’Art Moderne, Nice, France.

2006

APR 21. Jack Tworkov: 1929-1949 an exhibition focused on the early work of the artist opens at the Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago.

JUN 22. The New Landscape / The New Still Life: Soutine and Modern Art, curated by Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow, opens at Cheim & Read, New York. Tworkov's paintings and writings are featured.

2009

APR 3. Jack Tworkov: Woman, paintings and works on paper, 1945-1949opens at Valerie Carberry Gallery. The exhibition takes an in depth look at Tworkov's figurative painting of the late 1940s.

AUG 13. Jack Tworkov: Against Extremes, curated by Jason Andrew, opens at the UBS Art Gallery. The exhibitions marks the first retrospective exhibition of the artist's work to ever be held in New York City. The exhibition travels to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (Jul 2010).

OCT. Extreme of the Middle: Writings by Jack Tworkov, edited by Mira Schor, is published by Yale University Press. The book launch is hosted at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

2011

JUN 17. Jack Tworkov: The Accident of Choice, curated by Jason Andrew, opens at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center. The exhibition features work from late 1940s to 1952 with concentration on the summer Tworkov taught at Black Mountain College.