Jack Tworkov: Drawings from the 70s

February 6-May 1, 2021

MINUS SPACE

16 Main Street, Suite A
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.minusspace.com

Special COVID Hours: Saturdays, 11am-5pm + by appointment
DUMBO | corner of Main + Water
A or C to High Street | F to York Street | 2 or 3 to Clark Street

Brooklyn, NY — MINUS SPACE is honored to present the survey exhibition Jack Tworkov: Drawings from the 70s. Organized in collaboration with the Estate of Jack Tworkov, Van Doren Waxter the exhibition presents two dozen works on paper spanning the years 1970-1981, many of which are presented to the public for the very first time.

Renowned painter Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) was at the forefront of American modernism for seven decades. He forged a disciplined painting practice through ever-evolving methods, materials, and formats resulting in a singular artistic vision which continues to be avidly discussed and celebrated today. Starting in the mid to late-1960s, Tworkov’s earlier exuberant, gestural abstraction began to evolve into an increasingly reductive and analytical one. He started to organize his new paintings and accompanying drawings around the grid format and to utilize orthogonal lines, geometric shapes, and a limited color palette. Tworkov’s previously animated brushstrokes transformed into a kind of repeating hashmark that formed shimmering, transparent patterns.

Tworkov’s striking works on paper produced during the 1970s reveal and document the breadth of this experimentation during this critical transition in his late work. On view in the exhibition are a broad array of drawings from this period which range in approach from quick sketches for eventual paintings – sometimes with up to twelve separate studies ganged up a single page – to larger, highly-refined charcoal drawings on paper.

The artist utilized a noteworthy array of drafting materials in these works including graphite, pencil, colored pencil, and charcoal on a variety of supports, such as paper, translucent vellum, and graph paper. With these materials Tworkov explored a broad new visual vocabulary of radiating lines, checkered grids, shifting architectural planes, and translucent triangular and quadrilateral shapes, often dynamically depicted as if balanced on a single corner. Of particular note, the exhibition features ten works from his rigorous, rule-based Knight Series, which were informed by the various L-shaped movements a knight piece could potentially make across the checkered plane of a chessboard. The unpredictable, stepped lines added an inventive element resembling a constellation into the composition of his drawings.

The exhibition will also present one of Tworkov’s contemporaneous, large-format paintings entitled Q2-76 #1 (1976, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 inches), as well as the accompanying study on graph paper. A concurrent exhibition of the artist’s geometric paintings from this period entitled Tworkov: Towards Nirvana / Works from the 70s will also be on view at Van Doren Waxter, 23 E. 73rd Street, New York, NY, from January 14 – March 20, 2021. 

For further information about Jack Tworkov and available artworks, please contact the gallery. Available works can also be viewed on our new web site, as well as on our Artsy page: www.artsy.net/minus-space.