Hirshhorn and National Gallery of Art acquire signature works by Twrkv
Tworkov’s “Knight Series #6 (Q3-76 #7)” has been acquired by the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden while The National Gallery of Art has acquired “Knight Series #8 (Q3-77 #2)”
The Estate of Jack Tworkov and Van Doren Waxter announce the acquisition of Knight Series #6 (Q3-76 #7) by the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden and Knight Series #8 (Q3-77 #2) by The National Gallery of Art. These significant acquisitions round out the current holdings of Tworkov’s work for both Washington, DC-based institutions.
The “Knight Series” is a major group of eight paintings completed in the artist’s Provincetown studio between 1974-1977. The title directs our attention to the movement of the knight in a game of chess. Each canvas is divided into a grid of one hundred and twenty squares and each painting uniquely traces the maneuverings of a knight zigzagging and crisscrossing its tracks across the canvas.
The first work from this series acquired by a museum was Knight Series #1 (Q3-75 #2) purchased by The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1976 with a grant from the NEA and matched by gifts from members of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art. Curator Tom E. Hinson discussed the series in his essay “Recent Paintings by Richard Diebenkorn and Jack Tworkov" published in the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art in February 1980. In 2000, the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired Knight Series #7 (Q3-77 #1), 1977.
Jack Tworkov “Knight Series #6 (Q3-76 #7),” 1976, Oil on canvas, 90 x 75 in (228.6 x 190.5 cm) now in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
“These acquisitions,” explains Jason Andrew, Director of the Estate of Jack Tworkov, “demonstrate the continued commitment by major institutions to the work of Jack Tworkov and by doing so recognize the artist’s historical importance.”
For the Hirshhorn, this is the third painting to enter the collection and celebrates the museum’s 50th anniversary. Evelyn Hankins, Head Curator, explains:
“The Hirshhorn is delighted to add Jack Tworkov’s Knight Series #6 (Q3–76 #7), 1976, to our collection, where it joins two earlier paintings, Thursday (1960) and The Bridge (1951). This exceptional gift from the Estate in celebration of the Hirshhorn’s 50th anniversary enables the Museum to share with its audiences a broader understanding of Tworkov’s painting practice, particularly the way that he made use of the game of chess as a way to commingle his signature gestural style with a more hard-edged geometry.”
Jack Tworkov “Knight Series #8 (Q3-77 #2),” 1977, Oil on canvas, 90 x 72 in (228.6 x 182.9 cm) now in the collection of The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
For The National Gallery, this marks the fifth work and the third painting to enter the collection. Its importance is outlined here in a statement by Harry Cooper, now the Bunny Mellon Curator of Modern Art, at The National Gallery of Art:
“With Knight Series #8 (1977), a wonderful addition to the National Gallery’s collection, we now possess paintings from the three principal decades of Jack Tworkov’s career: the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The addition of a later painting is especially important in representing the artist’s turn to a more disciplined and geometric style, something he had eschewed in his abstract-expressionist period. But whatever the intellectual rigor of this work, which is one in a series based on the prescribed movement of the knight in the game of chess, it nonetheless carries all of the energetic touch and sensuous layering that was Tworkov’s hallmark throughout his career. ”