EP #16 (DRAWING NO. 1)

Tworkov, Jack

Ink on Paper

1960

X1964.04.05

Jack Tworkov is regarded as a seminal artist in the development of the Abstract Expressionist movement, alongside Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. He was also a very influential teacher, supporting a host of younger artists who would go on to make substantial contributions to the post-Abstract Expressionist art world. Tapped by his friend and colleague, Mercedes Matter, he was one of the initial instructors at the New York Studio Scholl. As a summer teacher at Black Mountain College, Tworkov encouraged such artists as Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, and his ultimate shift from gestural abstraction to more minimal compositions was influential to younger artists he taught at Yale, such as Richard Serra, Robert Mangold, and Brice Marden, and to more contemporary artists like Christopher Wool. Not known as a boisterous personality, art historian David Anfam's observation that "iconoclastic rebellion was never Tworkov's bent," is a good summation of Tworkov's career as a painter but fails to recognize the iconoclasm that Tworkov spurred in a new generation of artists.

This drawing is a series of interwoven linear brushstrokes deliberately smeared in several directions to distort the clean edge of the mark. The black configuration of expressionistic lines on a cream colored paper recalls caligraphic influences. Smearing also pulls a thin layer of ink across the surface of the drawing and accentuates the tooth of the paper.