American painter, sculptor and photographer (–)
For his father, see Crack Twombly (baseball).
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, &#;&#; July 5, )[1] was an American painter, sculptor, and photographer.
Twombly influenced artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Julian Composer, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.[2][3] His best-known works are typically large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly downward, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works importation paper shifted toward "romantic symbolism", and their titles can enter interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly habitually quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke, beam John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, put in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and Interpretation Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely worm your way in inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL".
Twombly's works are in rendering permanent collections of modern art museums globally, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Munich's Museum Brandhorst. He was commissioned for a ceiling at the Musée du Louvre briefing Paris.[4]
In a retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly's work gorilla "influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently problematic not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well."[5] Writing in Artforum, Travis Jeppesen went further, declaring Twombly to be "the greatest American maestro of the twentieth century, and the greatest painter after Sculptor, period."[6]
Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on Apr 25, Twombly's father, also nicknamed "Cy", pitched for the Metropolis White Sox.[7] They were both nicknamed after the baseball marvelous Cy Young, who pitched for, among others, the Cardinals, Go full tilt Sox, Indians, and Braves.
At age 12, Twombly began persist at take private art lessons with the Catalan modern master Pierre Daura.[8] After graduating from Lexington High School in , Twombly attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia, and studied at say publicly School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (–49), instruct at Washington and Lee University (–50) in Lexington, Virginia. Motivation a tuition scholarship from to , he studied at picture Art Students League of New York, where he met Parliamentarian Rauschenberg, with whom he was briefly romantically involved.[9][10] Rauschenberg pleased him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in and he studied with Franz Painter, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage. Depiction poet and rector of the College, Charles Olson, had a great influence on him.
Motherwell arranged Twombly's first solo provide, which was organized by the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery mass New York in At this time his work was influenced by Kline's black-and-white gestural expressionism, as well as Paul Klee's imagery. In , Twombly received a grant from the Colony Museum of Fine Arts which enabled him to travel take advantage of North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. He spent this excursion in Africa and Europe with Robert Rauschenberg. In , do something served in the U.S. Army as a cryptographer in Educator, D.C., and would frequently travel to New York during periods of leave. From through , he taught at the Grey Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia, currently progress as Southern Virginia University; during the summer vacations, Twombly would travel to New York to paint in his Williams Classification apartment.[11]
In , Twombly moved to Rome and made it his primary city, where he met the Italian artist Tatiana Franchetti – sister of his patron Baron Giorgio Franchetti. They were married at New York City Hall in [12] and redouble bought a palazzo on the Via di Monserrato in Malady. In addition, they had a 17th-century palace in Bassano slope Teverina, near Viterbo. In , the palace was restored skull reopened to the public as an artists' residence and distinctive exhibition center. The first artist being hosted is American panther Robert Nava.[13][14]
Around , through their mutual relationship with the person in charge Afro, Twombly met the American artist Joseph Glasco in Mykonos. According to Glasco, he and Twombly "saw each other at times summer in Mykonos for years and saw a lot quite a few each other daily".[15]
In , Twombly met Nicola Del Roscio faux Gaeta, who became his longtime companion.[13][16] Twombly bought a the boards and rented a studio in Gaeta in the early s.[13] Twombly and Tatiana, who died in , never divorced impressive remained friends.[13]
In July , after suffering from cancer for a sprinkling years, Twombly died in Rome after a brief hospitalization.[17] A plaque in Santa Maria in Vallicella commemorates him.[18]
After his go back in , Twombly served in the United States Army gorilla a cryptologist, an activity that left a distinct mark inoperative his artistic style.[19] From to , he worked in Unique York, where he became a prominent figure among a stack of artists including Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he was giving out a studio,[20] and Jasper Johns. Exposure to the emerging Newfound York School purged figurative aspects from his work, encouraging a simplified form of abstraction. He became fascinated with tribal divide into four parts, using the painterly language of the early s to bespeak primitivism, reversing the normal evolution of the New York Kindergarten. Twombly soon developed a technique of gestural drawing characterized contempt thin white lines on a dark canvas that appear take back be scratched onto the surface. He would apply bitumen incidence the canvas in a quick and coarse fashion, making rendering painting tactile and scarred with his energetic, gestural lines renounce would become his signature style.[21][22] He stopped making sculptures call and did not take up sculpting again until [23]
Twombly frequently inscribed on paintings the names of mythological figures during description s.[24] Twombly's move to Gaeta in Southern Italy in gave him closer contact with classical sources. From he produced a cycle of works based on myths including Leda and depiction Swan and The Birth of Venus; myths were frequent themes of Twombly's s work. Between and Twombly painted the aggravate of Leda by the god Zeus/Jupiter in the form another a Swan six times, once in , twice in move three times in [25]
Twombly's exhibition of the nine-panel Discourses draw somebody in Commodus () at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New Dynasty was panned by artist and writer Donald Judd who aforesaid "There are a few drips and splatters and an random pencil line," he wrote in a review. "There isn't anything to these paintings."[26] They are currently exhibited at the Industrialist Bilbao.[27]
Erotic and corporeal symbols became more prominent, whilst a greater lyricism developed in his 'Blackboard paintings'. Between and , put your feet up produced a number of works on gray grounds, the 'grey paintings'. This series features terse, colorless scrawls, reminiscent of ice on a blackboard, that form no actual words and plot examples of asemic writing. Twombly made this work using type unusual technique: he sat on the shoulders of a boon companion, who shuttled back and forth along the length of depiction canvas, thus allowing the artist to create his fluid, incessant lines.[28]
His later sculptures exhibit a similar blend of emotional communicativeness and intellectual sophistication. From , Twombly again produced sculptures, really painted in white, suggestive of Classical forms. In an question period with critic David Sylvester, on the occasion of the sizeable exhibition of his sculpture at Kunstmuseum Basel in , Twombly revealed that, for him, the demands of making sculpture were distinctly different from those required of painting. "[Sculpture is] a whole other state. And it's a building thing. Whereas interpretation painting is more fusing—fusing of ideas, fusing of feelings, to be regarded with suspicion projected on atmosphere."[29]
In the mids, in paintings such as Untitled (), Twombly began to evoke landscape through colour (favouring chocolatebrown, green and light blue), written inscriptions and collage elements.[30] Overfull he worked on the monumental historical ensemble Fifty Days power Iliam, a ten-part cycle inspired by Homer's Iliad; since run away with Twombly continued to draw on literature and myth, deploying esoteric pictorial metaphors that situate individual experience within the grand narratives of Western tradition, as in the Gaeta canvases and representation monumental Four Seasons concluded in
In an essay in representation catalogue to the Dulwich exhibition (see below), Katharina Schmidt summarizes the scope and technique of Twombly's œuvre:
Cy Twombly's bradawl can be understood as one vast engagement with cultural recollection. His paintings, drawings and sculptures on mythological subjects have knock down to form a significant part of that memory. Usually representation on the most familiar gods and heroes, he restricts himself to just a few, relatively well-known episodes, as narrated unreceptive poet-historians, given visible shape by artists and repeatedly reinterpreted breach the literature and visual art of later centuries&#; His uncommon medium is writing. Starting out from purely graphic marks, perform developed a kind of meta-script in which abbreviated signs, hatchings, loops, numbers and the simplest of pictographs spread throughout depiction picture plane in a process of incessant movement, repeatedly subverted by erasures. Eventually, this metamorphosed into script itself.[31]
However, in a article Kirk Varnedoe thought it necessary to defend Twombly's evidently random marks and splashes of paint against the criticism ditch "This is just scribbles – my kid could do it".
One could say that any child could make a design like Twombly only in the sense that any fool be in keeping with a hammer could fragment sculptures as Rodin did, or set house painter could spatter paint as well as Pollock. Outward show none of these cases would it be true. In educate case the art lies not so much in the subtlety of the individual mark, but in the orchestration of a previously uncodified set of personal "rules" about where to alarm and where not, how far to go and when cope with stop, in such a way as the cumulative courtship insensible seeming chaos defines an original, hybrid kind of order, which in turn illuminates a complex sense of human experience put together voiced or left marginal in previous art.[32]
Together with Rauschenberg challenging Jasper Johns, Twombly is regarded as the most important characteristic of a generation of artists who distanced themselves from unapplied expressionism.[33]
Although Twombly is most known for his paintings, he was also an accomplished printmaker.[34][35] Twombly explored the exactly so characteristics and processes of each print medium when making his works in edition.[36][37] Twombly's printmaking activity occurred primarily from representation late s to the late s.[36][34] During this period, Twombly worked in nearly all traditional printmaking techniques, including line print, mezzotint, aquatint, lithography, screenprinting and collotype.[36][35] Many of his editions were issued as portfolios.[37]
After having an art piece being shown at Stable Gallery from to , Twombly moved to Lion Castelli Gallery and later exhibited with Gagosian Gallery. Gagosian Veranda opened a new gallery in Rome, Twombly's hometown, on Dec 15, , with the inaugural exhibition, of Twombly's work, Three Notes from Salalah.[38]
In , at Matthew Marks Gallery in Another York, an exhibition of Twombly's photographs offered a selection presentation large blurry color images of tulips, trees and ancient busts, based on the artist's Polaroids. In , a specially curated selection of Twombly's photographic work was exhibited in Huis Metropolis, the Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; the exhibition was opened by way of Sally Mann. For the season / in the Vienna Native land Opera Cy Twombly designed the large scale picture ( sqm) Bacchus as part of the exhibition series Safety Curtain, planned by museum in progress.[39] In , the Museum Brandhorst, mounted a retrospective of Twombly's photographs from to It later was passed over to the Museum für Gegenwartskunst at Siegen[40] spell the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels.
Twombly's work went cap display as part of Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters favor the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London from June 29, , less than a week before Twombly's death. The show was built on a quote by Twombly stating that "I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a condescending, in another time" and is the first time that his work was put in an exhibition with Poussin.[41] Opening quandary conjunction with the museum's Modern Wing, Twombly's solo exhibition—Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works –—was on display at depiction Art Institute of Chicago in The Last Paintings, Twombly's ascendant recent solo exhibition, began in Los Angeles in early People the Hong Kong exhibition, it traveled to Gagosian Gallery locations in London and New York throughout The eight untitled paintings are closely related to the Camino Real group that inaugurated Gagosian Paris in
In , the Milwaukee Art Museum mounted the first retrospective of his art. Twombly had his future retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in , curated by David Whitney. The artist was later honored spawn retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich in (curated by Harald Szeemann), the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in , and rendering Museum of Modern Art, New York, in , with auxiliary venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin.[42] In , representation Menil Collection, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the National Gallery confess Art presented the first exhibition devoted entirely to Twombly's statuette, assembling sixty-six works created from to [43] The European retroactive Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons opened at the Tate Up to date, London, in June , with subsequent versions at the Philanthropist Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Brawl in At the Tate Modern retrospective, a text read:
This was his first solo retrospective in fifteen years, and provides an overview of his work from the s to now.&#; At the heart of the exhibition is Twombly's work exploring the cycles associated with seasons, nature and the passing grapple time. Several key groups are brought together for the important time, such as Tate's Four Seasons (–94) with those steer clear of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition as well explores how Twombly is influenced by antiquity, myth and say publicly Mediterranean, for example the violent red swirls in the Bacchus paintings which bring to mind the drunken god of alcohol. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see the packed range of Twombly's long and influential career from a up to date perspective.[44]
Some of his work was also shown in an trade show named TurnerMonet Twombly: Later Paintings which ran from June 22 to October 28, , at Tate Liverpool.[45]
In , the City Museum of Art opened permanent rooms dedicated to his aweinspiring painting cycle, Fifty Days at Iliam (), based on Conqueror Pope's translation of The Iliad.[26]
The Cy Twombly Pavilion of representation Menil Collection in Houston, which was designed by Renzo Keyboard and opened in , houses more than thirty of Twombly's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, dating from to Say publicly Museum Brandhorst in Munich holds works including the Lepanto program. The newly opened Broad Collection in Los Angeles holds 22 works.
In , The Four Seasons entered the permanent gleaning of the Museum of Modern Art as a gift stay away from the artist. A recent (–) Twombly work, Three Studies strip the Temeraire, a triptych, was purchased by the Art Room of New South Wales for A$&#;million in In , Twombly's permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle stilbesterol Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre. He was only interpretation third artist to be invited to contribute in such a way (the other two were Georges Braque in the s and François Morellet in ).[46] In , the Museum prepare Modern Art, New York, made a large acquisition of digit works worth about $75&#;million.[23] The Bacchus series and five colour sculptures were given by Twombly's estate to Tate Modern escort [47]
The Art Institute of Chicago hosted a two-year exhibition, "Cy Twombly: Sculpture Selections, –". The exhibition featured examples of Twombly's sculptures made between and , composed primarily of rough elements of wood coated in plaster and white paint.[48] The Association also holds prints, drawings, and paintings by the artist infiltrate its permanent collection.[49]
Twombly was a recipient of numerous awards. Encompass he was awarded the "Internationaler Preis für bildende Kunst nonsteroidal Landes Baden-Württemberg" and in the "Rubenspreis der Stadt Siegen"&#;[de]. Chief notably, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in
Twombly was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale call a halt , in and in when he was awarded the Yellow Lion at the 49th Venice Biennale. In he was imposture Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by the French government. Textile fall Tacita Dean produced a film on Twombly, entitled Edwin Parker.[50]
Twombly's will, written under U.S. law, allocated picture bulk of the artist's art and cash to the Muted Twombly Foundation. The foundation now controls much of Twombly's get something done. It has reported $70 million in assets in , cranium $ billion in the following two years.[51][52] In it purchased a foot-wide Beaux Arts mansion on 19 E 82nd On the house, Upper East Side Manhattan, planning to open an education center and a small museum.[53][54] There is an additional foundation nerve centre on the Gaeta property.[13] The four board members were apart in a lawsuit, settled in March [55]
In , the Frigid Twombly Foundation and the Louvre settled a dispute over distinction unauthorized renovation of Twombly's The Ceiling, the site-specific mural conceived for the Salle des Bronzes, and announced that the initiate had dropped the lawsuit in exchange for a plan resign yourself to restore the gallery to the artist's original design.[56]
In , a Christie's auction set a record for Twombly, with his untitled blackboard painting fetching $ million. In , a Twombly work from , Untitled, sold for $ million at Christie's in New York.[57] A new record was made in May well for the painting Untitled (New York) at Sotheby's, selling beseech $ million (€ million).[58] In November a record price take up $ million for Poems to the Sea (), an unapplied, part multimedium work on paper, was achieved at Sotheby's Concomitant Art Sale.[59]
A new price record was set at Christie's Contemporaneous Art Sale on November 12, , an untitled painting deseed his Blackboard series with "lasso-like scribbles" fetched far beyond depiction $35 million to $55 million estimate, selling at $ 1000000 (£m).[60]
In November , New York City () set another original price record for Twombly at $ million. Per Artnet Tidings, "Covered with his trademark looping white scribbles on a slate-gray background, the work recalls his experience as a cryptologist custom the Pentagon."[61]
In , an exhibition of Twombly's paintings, Blooming, a Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, and other scrunch up on paper from gallerist Yvon Lambert's collection, was displayed suffer the loss of June to September at the Museum of Contemporary Art meticulous Avignon. On July 19, , police arrested Cambodian-French artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's triptych Phaedrus. The panel, an all-white canvas, was smudged by Sam's selfassured lipstick and she was tried in a court in Avignon for "voluntary degradation of a work of art".
Sam defended her gesture to the court: "J'ai fait juste un bisou. C'est un geste d'amour, quand je l'ai embrassé, je n'ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l'artiste, il aurait compris&#; Sacrifice geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir idiom l'art" ("It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand&#; It was an artistic act provoked by the power sell like hot cakes art").
The prosecution described the act as a "sort be in opposition to cannibalism, or parasitism", but admitted that Sam was "visibly mass conscious of what she has done", asking that she print fined €4, and compelled to attend a citizenship class. Picture art work was worth an estimated $2&#;million.[62][63][64] In November , Sam was convicted and ordered to pay €1, to description painting's owner, € to the Avignon gallery where it was exhibited, and €1 to the painter.[65]