Twrkv: Important paintings from the 70s, opens at Butler Institute of American Art
Youngstown, OH - The Butler Institute of American Art is pleased to present Jack Tworkov: Important Paintings from the '70s. Organized by curator Jason Andrew, this exhibition features signature works by this noted American painter including a major painting on loan from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. A preview and gallery talk with the curator be held on Saturday, October 10 at 2pm. The exhibition will open with a reception to the public on Sunday, October 11 from 1-3pm. The exhibition continues through December 20. For additional information please visit: The Butler Institute of American Art.
In the mid-1960s Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) broke from his Abstract Expressionist style. He felt his work had reached a predictable stage where his compositions had become automatically repetitive. The exuberance and the gestural approach that was a condition at the birth of his paintings from the '50s could not be “maintained without pretense forever.”
By the 1970s, and at a time when Agnes Martin, Frank Stella and others were also introducing grids and structures into their paintings, Tworkov began creating some of his most important yet rarely seen works. This exhibition selectively explores the tremendous variety of Tworkov oeuvre during this important decade (1970-1979).
Striking out on a new beginning, Tworkov turned to geometry and, using the rectangle, began imposing mathematical systems in which an infinite number of compositional possibilities could be tried. The artist wrote, “I soon arrived at an elementary system of measurements implicit in the geometry of the rectangle. . .”
Exploring a kind of structured improvisation, Tworkov layered lines governed by strict rules wherein his spontaneous brushwork—the directional strokes and loose gestures that characterized his earlier work—would reside. The artist had reinvented himself capturing the tension between spontaneity and restraint, the automatic and the planned.
Organized by curator Jason Andrew, this exhibition presents major paintings from the '70s by Jack Tworkov featuring a seminal work titled Diptych II (NY-Q1-71 #1) (1971) on loan from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
The Thomases Family Endowment of the Youngstown Area Jewish Foundation helped to fund this retrospective of works by Jack Tworkov. The Butler’s Trumbull branch is funded by Foundation Medici.