JACK TWORKOV | EBB TIDE

The Estate of Jack Tworkov

ACME Fine Art, Boston

Private Collection (acquired from the above in March 2013

Exhibition catalogue. Armstrong, Richard. Jack Tworkov: Paintings, 1928-1982. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1987 (ill. in color, pl. 53)

Glueck, Grace. "Jack Tworkov: Red, White and Blue." The New York Times, Friday, March 29, 2002, p. E37 (mentioned):

“Straying far out from the image of a flag is Ebb Tide (1964), in which the flag’s geometries are translated into three irregular horizontal lines rhythmically divided by verticals, like boundary markers, which appear to recede into space. They are brought back to the painting surface by three very upfront, free-form horizontal streaks. All marks are in brilliant red on a white ground.”

Schor, Mira, ed. Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009 (ill. in color, pl. 10)

Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit, Jack Tworkov, April – May 1967

Chatham College, Pittsburgh, Jack Tworkov: Paintings, April 1967

Mitchell-Innes & Nash and Ameringer/Howard/Yohe, New York, Jack Tworkov: Red, White and Blue, March - April 2002 (no. 35, ill. in color in catalogue with essay by Harry Cooper)

“This work originates from a series of important paintings featuring compositions in red, white, and blue, which Tworkov began in 1960.

As the artist explained in 1964:

From a formal point of view, the main thing about most of these pictures is that they are built on the idea of the long stroke, which is an element by which to articulate the surface—much like the dots in Seurat, or the flicker of paint in an impressionist painting, or the short stroke of the Fauves. In my painting it began to evolve into a rather long stroke, which became the basic unit on which to build a picture […]

In 1958, maybe somewhat under the influence of Jasper Johns’ Flag […] I went through a phase, a patriotic phase. I like the idea of painting red, white and blue. I began with a painting called Souza—almost with the same kind of idea of celebrating something democratic. So this idea of painting red, white, and blue, pictures became really rather a serious theme from that point of view.

Painted in Provincetown, the title makes reference not only visually to the slanting posts of the pier and the quickly shifting tides of the bay, while also referencing the popular song by the same title written in 1953 by the lyricist Carl Sigman and composer Robert Maxwell.” - Jason Andrew, Director of the Estate of Jack Tworkov and editor of the online catalogue raisonné