Provincetown Artist Registry, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, New England

PROVINCETOWN ARTIST REGISTRY

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Jack Tworkow 1900-1982

Born in Poland, Jack Tworkov came to the U.S. as a young man; he spoke with a slight, but elegantly nuanced accent which carried a hint of civilized discipline, or control. In 1924 Tworkov was in Provincetown attending a school run by Ross Moffett and Heinrich Pfeiffer: The Provincetown Painting Class, through which he met Karl Knaths who became, for a while, his mentor.

Tworkov was impelled towards Cubism and Modernism, a stance that led him to participate in the revolt against the conservative wing of the Art Association. The revolt was lead by Moffett and Tod Lindenmuth in 1926, when it was decided to have two events in the summer, a “Modernist” followed by a “Regular” (read conservative) exhibition.

When Tworkov returned in the 1950s after becoming part of the Abstract Expressionist group in New York, he was moving toward a personal mode within a style that had become too elusive and unstructured for his point of view.

The collection’s painting is typical of Tworkov’s work in the 1950s: a colored expanse against which fiercely brushed linear strokes hide or cast a veil across the surface. Jack told me once how he yearned to paint a landscape directly in nature, and I’ve always seen these pictures of his as evocations of Cape marsh-grass or reeds. But in point of fact, this work is a preview of what was to become the magisterial painting of the last years before his death in 1982.

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The Collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, March 3-13, 2000, The National Arts Club, New York, NY; Curatorial Notes: Tony Vevers