JAMES “JIM” TIROFF, ink drawings, Women's Studio “Tanya” and figure composition, 2pcs.

Both signed and dated 1965.
Largest blade dimensions 41x30cm.

James Francis Tiroff was born in Alice, Texas, in 1939. A visual artist, musician and theatre designer and performer, he was a member of the avant-garde theatre company Living Theatre from the late 1950s and toured Europe with the company in the 1960s. Before traveling to Europe, Tiroff became a preacher at Universal Life Church, and by company members he was called Pastor Jim. He died of a heroin overdose in 1975.

The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in New York City in 1947. Today, they are the oldest experimental theatre company in the United States still operating. The theatre company has been run for most of the time by its founders Judith Malina (actor) and Julian Beck (poet and artist). After Beck's death in 1985, Malina has run the theatre company together with actor Hanon Reznikov.

In the 1950s, the group was one of the first in the United States to field the great European playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht and Jean Cocteau, but also modernists such as the poet T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. The group was housed in numerous small venues around New York. Due to financial problems or conflicts, they often had to move but despite this they came to establish the so-called Off-Broadway stage. During this period, they had much in common with the Beat writers. In 1959, their performance The Connection gained national attention due to its coarse language and bare description of drug addiction.