JACK TWORKOV | FIGURE A

Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. Markus, Chicago

Private Collection

Suzanne Hilberry Gallery, Birmingham (acquired from the above in 1977)

B.C. Holland Gallery, Chicago

Sotheby's New York, 15 May 2014, Lot 166

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

“A striking early example of Jack Tworkov’s unique painterly practice, Figure A deconstructs the naturalistic rendering of the female body, thus dissolving the figure-ground distinction and articulating a raw, unmediated human essence.

Tworkov painted this work the year of the founding of the Eighth Street Club, the evolving center of the New York art world and later, the hot bed of Abstract Expressionists. As a founding member, Tworkov was a noted intellectual of this group. His form of Abstract Expressionism manifested in the generation of art that stood against all formulas—an art in which impulse, instinct, and the automatic was mandate.

The Club officially opened in October 1949. Simultaneously, Tworkov opened his second solo exhibition at the Charles Egan Gallery where he exhibited an important series of abstract paintings inspired by landscape and the figure. This work was likely included in this exhibition. In his review of the show for Art News, Thomas B. Hess pronounced, “Jack Tworkov emerges […] as one of the most masterful artists of his generation now at work in America.”

“Figure A,” captures a unique moment in Tworkov’s trajectory—a moment where the tangible shifts boldly into the intangible. Evincing a profound interest in the work of Paul Cézanne, the work reveals an artist embracing gestural lines and angular planes of color that would come to define his creative output. Tworkov held a philosophy that “maybe the only way to break down the walls of familiar experience is through a re-experience of the familiar.” While the work centers on the figure of a standing woman, signs and symbols are also introduced. The work exhibits a subtle and refined approach to gestural abstraction, where Tworkov accentuates the composition with a loose yet directed mark.

Painted in 1949, the year after Tworkov moved into a studio across the hall from Willem de Kooning. The pair often organized weekly studies from the model. Figure A materializes the close association, discussion and exchange of ideas that deeply influenced the development and practice of both artists in the seminal years to come.” - Jason Andrew, Director of the Estate of Jack Tworkov and editor of the online catalogue raisonné