Chris Miller reviews Jack Tworkov: Drawing the Figure at Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago, on view through January 10, 2015.

Miller writes: "This first-generation American seemed less interested in pushing the boundaries of art and taste than in exploiting every new opportunity for expressing and valorizing his restless, rootless self in an ever-changing world. Life drawing, quickly executed, gave him many such opportunities, as he moved back and forth between observational detail and compositional dynamic… The narrative qualities of his figures re-emerged in the work of the 1960s. They’re still rough, but they almost feel cool and classic, expressing, perhaps, the financial security and academic stature that he had achieved. As always, his mastery of the human figure in space is remarkable—even on a page of one-minute poses from 1963."