Auction Highlights: Modern & Post-War Art — November 30, 2023

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The fall Modern & Post-War Art auction will include work from the early twentieth century through post-World War II art movements such as Pop, Minimalism, and Abstract Expressionism.

Jack Tworkov & Wilfrid Zogbaum

Two mid-century artists whose works are featured in this sale are Jack Tworkov and Wilfrid Zogbaum.

In 1968, Jack Twokov met the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and sat for several portraits. The two artists were introduced by Janice Biala, sister of Tworkov. Calendar Collage, which was once in the collection of Cartier-Bresson, dates from the summer of their introduction and is a great timepiece—aside from the fact that it is an assemblage of calendar pages.

Left to right: Wilfrid Zogbaum, *Untitled*, welded steel with oxidized patina, 1960. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000; Jack Tworkov, *Calendar Collage*, paper collage and metal staples on board, 1968. Estimate $6,500 to $8,500.

Zogbaum, along with his contemporaries, Ibram Lassaw and Seymour Lipton, are amongst the short list of sculptors who created accomplished works in the 1930s and 40s as part of the biomorphic, new plastic, and non-objective abstract art genre, who then successfully transitioned into Abstract Expressionism of the post-war era. The steel weldment created in 1960 is very reminiscent of the works of David Smith, with the joining of random shapes such as scrap metal and utilitarian objects into his composition. Zogbaum often incorporated found objects into his compositions. Rocks, set into undulating braches of steel is a typical format in his nature-inspired creations.