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Pour l’inauguration de l’ouverture de sa galerie parisienne, Larry Gagosian est heureux de présenter «Camino Real,» une série de cinq nouvelles peintures de Cy Twombly. Chaque tableau reprend le geste pictural inimitable et exubérant propre à l’artiste ainsi qu’une intensité de palette typique de ses peintures récentes. Camino Real fait référence à la pièce de théâtre de Tennessee Williams, mise en scène la première fois à New York en 1953. Le choix des personnages, dont Don Quichotte, Lord Byron, Casanova, le Baron de Charlus et Marguerite Gautier, représente un mode de vie romantique, où «les vieux chevaliers, les rêveurs et les voyous» ont une vision libre et désinvolte de la vie. Les tableaux présentés de Twombly ont tous un double rapport avec le titre de l’exposition, à la fois allusif et élusif. L’évidence renouvelée d’une vitalité exceptionnelle et une liberté de travail avec des couleurs intenses et des gestes expansifs ne se restreignent pas qu’à une seule référence. La palette de couleurs vives rappelle la série Rose and Peonies et contraste avec l’austérité des sculptures en bronze patiné, aussi présentées ici dans l’exposition. Un catalogue illustré avec un texte de Marie-Laure Bernadac accompagnera l’exposition. Cy Twombly est né en 1928 à Lexington, Virginie. Il étudie à la School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947-1949); Art Students League, New York (1950-1951); et Black Mountain College en Caroline du Nord (1951-1952). Au milieu des années cinquante, suite à ses voyages en Europe et en Afrique, il devient une figure importante parmi les artistes travaillant à New York, dont Robert Rauschenberg et Jasper Johns. En 1959, Twombly s’installe de manière définitive en Italie. En 1968, le Milwaukee Art Center organise sa première rétrospective. Cette exposition sera suivie par d’autres rétrospectives majeures dont celles à la Kunsthaus Zürich (1987) présentée ensuite à Madrid, Londres et Paris ; Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994) (exposition itinérante à Houston, Los Angeles et Berlin) et à la Pinakothek der Moderne à Munich (2006). En 1995, la Menil Collection de Houston, inaugure la Cy Twombly Gallery, une salle présentant ses œuvres produites depuis 1954. La rétrospective européenne «Cy Twombly : Cycles and Seasons» ouvre à la Tate Modern, Londres en juin 2008 et est ensuite présentée au Guggenheim Bilbao et au Musée d’Art Moderne de Rome en 2009. Les expositions récentes présentées sont «Cy Twombly : The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007» à la Art Institute of Chicago (2009) et «Sensations of the Moment,» le Museum Moderner Kunst Stifting Ludwig, Vienne (2009). Début 2010, Ceiling, une œuvre permanente in situ, a été dévoilée dans la Salle des Bronzes du Musée du Louvre. À cette occasion, Cy Twombly a été nommé Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur par le ministre de la Culture Frédéric Mitterrand. Twombly vit à Lexington, Virginie. GAGOSIAN INAUGURATES PARIS GALLERY WITH AN EXHIBITION BY CY TWOMBLY
Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion.
Tennessee Williams
To inaugurate the new Paris gallery, Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Camino Real,” a group of five new paintings by Cy Twombly. Each displays the inimitable and exuberant painterly gestures and highly keyed palette typical of his recent paintings. Camino Real is a reference to the play by Tennessee Williams, first performed in New York in 1953. The cast of characters, which includes Don Quixote, Lord Byron, Casanova, Baron de Charlus, and Marguerite Gautier, represents a romantic attitude to life, ”old knights, dreamers and troublemakers” who retain a wild and untrammelled vision. Twombly’s paintings have an allusive and elusive relationship with this title; they are renewed evidence of his exceptional vitality and the freedom to work with intense colors and effusive gestures that are not restricted to a single reference. Their vivid palette relates to his previous series of "rose" and "peony" paintings, and contrasts with the austerity of the patinated bronze sculptures that are also part of this exhibition. A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Marie-Laure Bernadac will accompany the exhibition. Cy Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947–1949); the Art Students League, New York (1950–1951); and Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1951–1952). In the mid 1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a group of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1959, Twombly settled permanently in Italy. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center mounted his first retrospective. This was followed by major retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1987) travelling to Madrid, London and Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994) (travelling to Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006). In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened at The Menil Collection, Houston, exhibiting works made by the artist since 1954. The European retrospective "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons" opened at the Tate Modern, London in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome in 2009. Recent exhibitions include "Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007," The Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and "Sensations of the Moment," the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, (2009). Earlier this year Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre. At the same time he was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government. Twombly lives in Lexington, Virginia. CY TWOMBLY BIOGRAPHY In 1962 Cy Twombly (born 1928 in Lexington, Virginia) painted a work that illustrates many of the abiding engagements of his practice. Untitled is divided into two zones by a horizontal line about two thirds of the way up. Across the bottom edge of the canvas, Twombly has scribbled a textual fragment gleaned from the poet Sappho: “But their heart turned cold + they dropped their wings.” The phrase, suggesting a hovering between higher and lower realms, conjures up a distant classical realm, even as the grappling, awkward hand renders the words materially present.
In the upper third of the canvas, the artist provides a code for viewing: a white circle swirled with pink is labelled “blood”; an aggressive red “x” reads “flesh”; a glutinous dollop of brown paint, “earth” or possibly “youth”; a delicate disc of wispy white paint, “clouds”; and a shiny coin-shaped form in graphite pencil, “mirror”. Beneath this code, Twombly has rendered, within a drawn frame, an array of possibilities for mark-making per se, as though to set them apart from the more direct references of words. The elements of the code come from three distinct experiential fields: the elemental (earth and clouds), the somatic (flesh and blood) and the subjective (mirror). And they can be mapped on to three corresponding traditional genres of oil painting, respectively: landscape, figure and self-portraiture. In Untitled we see Twombly’s invocation of myth and poetry, his wavering between high and low and his sustained dwelling on the threshold where writing becomes drawing or painting. Perhaps most importantly, we see in this painting how marks and words – in collaboration and counter-distinction – construct meaning differently. As John Berger has written, Twombly “visualises with living colours the silent space that exists between and around words”. Although his work resonates strongly with generations of younger artists, ranging from Brice Marden to Richard Prince to Tacita Dean to Patti Smith, it has a general propensity to polarise its audience between perplexity and unbridled admiration. (Remember the incident in summer 2007 of a woman planting a lipstick kiss on a Twombly canvas on show in Lyon?) Additionally, the critical and historical reception has seemed to describe two Twomblys – one about form, the other about content. Some writers have concentrated on the materiality of the artist’s mark as aggressive, often illegible graffiti; others have followed the classical allusions to ferret out the references. Two elements might serve as metaphors for the predominant interpretations: the floating disc of white paint labelled “clouds” standing for the poetic and mythological aspects, and the scatological heap of brown paint designating “earth”. However, Twombly’s painterly palimpsests trace the progressions through which form and content, text and image are inextricably linked. Earth / Youth Cy Twombly arrived in Manhattan in 1950 while the New York School painting of Pollock and de Kooning was in full swing. Upon Robert Rauschenberg’s encouragement, Twombly joined him for the 1951–1952 sessions at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina – a liberal refuge, a site of free
experimentation and exchange in a nation growing increasingly conservative during the Cold War. Among the influential teachers present at this time were Charles Olson, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and John Cage. Building on the freedom afforded by the previous generation, the younger artists emphasised libidinal energy integrated through experience. They focused attention on calligraphic gesture and word/image relationships resulting in work that was more syncretic, less spontaneously automatist. Works such as Twombly’s Min-Oe (1951) bear evidence of the poet Olson’s interests in the roots of writing in ancient cultures and condensed glyphic forms. For eight months spanning 1952–1953 Twombly and Rauschenberg travelled through Europe and north Africa, joined for a while by the writer Paul Bowles. Upon returning to New York, Rauschenberg set up the Fulton Street studio that Twombly sometimes shared. Eleanor Ward invited the two artists to exhibit at her Stable Gallery. A series of Twombly’s works on light grounds dating to 1955 were given curious titles from a list collaboratively compiled by Twombly, Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns – Criticism, The Geeks, Academy. Here, pencil and crayon lines are inscribed into viscous light greyish brown paint. Among the anxious, discontinuous thickets, basic signs and letters begin to appear. In 1957, having built a bridge of connections with Italian artists showing frequently at the Stable Gallery, Twombly left again for Italy, where he would remain for the most part, though making frequent trips, including many to the States. He established a studio in Rome overlooking the Colosseum and wrote a short statement for the Italian art journal L’Esperienza moderna, which was to remain the sole published reflection on his own work until 2000, when he was interviewed by David Sylvester. In the statement, Twombly describes his process: “Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate – it is the sensation of its own realisation.” Works from this era bear out the description. In Arcadia, for example, it is as though he taps into the nervous system, harnessing an alert state of tension, letting it come through in abrupt bursts at a level where it is generally inhibited by the body’s higher functions, registering its insistent throb in stuttering, jittery, whiplash lines. His move to Italy also afforded him ready access to the Mediterranean repository of classical ruin and reference. In works such as Olympia, words and names – “Roma”, “Amor” – emerge out of a network of marks. In 1959 Twombly executed some of the most spare works of his career, among them the 24 drawings that comprise Poems to the Sea, done on the coast of Italy at Sperlonga. What order of poems, punctuated with numerals and question marks, are these? The sea is reduced to horizon line and word, scribblings and veils of paint against the stark white of paper. A persistent compulsion is invoked in the viewer, the desire to read what is there, but not fully manifest in the artist’s scrawled script. Two words in these drawings emerge into legibility, “time” and “Sappho”, as if washed up on the beach alongside sudden, subtle gem-flashes of colour – blue, orange-yellow, pink – gleaming all the more because of their discretion. In these pages, meaning is endlessly frustrated and pursued. It settles only in the distance, figured perhaps by the horizon lines that move across the top of each of the drawings – in fact, simply grey or blue lines made with a straight edge, but suggesting seascapes at the vanishing point. The flat planes of sea and page have been collapsed. Writing comes in waves, rolling funnels of cursive script, crossed out, erased, enfoamed in satiny greyish-white paint. The signs are given as nascent forms, as gestural indications of “the hand’s becoming”, as Roland Barthes so aptly phrased it. Flesh and Blood In the autumn of 1960 Twombly had his first solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. Moving into the 1960s, thick and florid colour comes into his work, along with multiple classical references. During the prolific summer of 1961, he reached a fever pitch, a colouristic crescendo in the Ferragosto paintings. A thickly encrusted palette of brown, pink and red takes on a viscerality paired in the work with a body parcelled into pictograms: pendulous breasts, erupting penises, scatological posteriors. From 1961 to 1963 mythological motifs appear with increasing insistence: Leda and the Swan, Venus, Apollo, Achilles. This line of investigation culminated in 1963 with a series of works called Nine Discourses on Commodus, an obscure portrait of the megalomaniacal Roman emperor conceived while Twombly was reading the French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet and looking at the paintings of Francis Bacon. These works were shown at Castelli in 1964, to a New York art world which had by then turned to Pop and Minimalism. Following this exhibition, Twombly’s American enthusiasm ebbed for a number of years. The situation was quite different in Europe, where his work remained a critical success. Nevertheless, the Commodus exhibition represents a crucial moment of rupture in the artist’s career, for, as he commented, it made him “the happiest painter around for a couple of years: no one gave a damn what I did”. Approaching the end of the 1960s, Twombly employed a monochrome grey ground. In 1966 white writing in looped repetitive script appears on blackboard-like surfaces. The works, which continue into the early 1970s, resemble rudimentary handwriting tests, registering the muscular rhythms of the arm relaxing and tensing, and seem to eschew outside reference; but Leonardo da Vinci’s Deluge drawings and the Italian Futurists’ spatio-temporal explorations echo through them. Clouds Beginning in 1975 and continuing into the present, Twombly has been working towards increasingly integrated combinations of text and image; of lines – both written and drawn – and colour. The repeated returns to the rich resources of classical mythology have remained the complications of his work. He employs myth as yet another form in conjunction with painting, drawing and writing. He sometimes suggests myth’s first seminal stirring, letting only hermetic fragments come to the surface as names from the past: Hero and Leander, Orpheus, Bacchus. At other times he offers a full-blown line or verse burdened with all of its cultural and poetic associations like a tree overripe with fruit. Roberto Calasso has written of the Greek myths: “All the powers of the cult of gods have migrated into a single, immobile and solitary act: that of reading.” Twombly’s caveat, however, would be that the gods’ powers lie not in a single act, but in the mobilisation of the space between reading and seeing. We see this in works such as Venus and Apollo (both 1975). In Venus the name of the goddess is written out in a palimpsest of red lines with a blossom drawn in crimson oil stick beneath. She is attended by a pencil-drawn list of her various names (Nadyomene, Aphrodite, Nymphaea…) and of her associations (myrtle, poppy, apple, sparrow…). “Venus” is written out so as to emphasise the openness of the “V”, “N” and “U”.In the pendant drawing, “Apollo” is delineated in dark blue with a triangle, the Greek delta, serving as the first initial and doubling as a directional pointer upward. Like the delta, the two letters “o” of the name are closed forms, as against the five open letters of Venus. Apollo, too, is accompanied by a list of his many names and attributes (laurel, palm, tree, hawk, grasshopper…). In these drawings, no direct definition is provided (no goddess of love or god of measure), but rather a network of allusions given both word and form. The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a retrospective exhibition in 1979 intended to rectify Twombly’s relative absence on the American scene. Roland Barthes, upon the artist’s suggestion, wrote the catalogue essay, “The Wisdom of Art”. In his tendency to promote a proliferating, reference-laden and intricate web of text, Barthes met his match with Twombly, whose work he described as “inimitable”: “It is in a smear that we find the truth of redness; it is in a wobbly line that we find the truth of a pencil.” The exhibition made only a small splash, critiqued by some for being “too European”. Twombly was still in Rome and very much outside the dominant narratives of contemporary American art of the time. The Green series, Untitled [A Painting in Nine Parts], is a sustained investigation of colour set in relation to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and Monet’s art. Clearly gesturing toward landscape painting, this work seems to be the most mimetic of Twombly’s oeuvre, yet it is also the most rawly material – suggesting the two primary paths taken in the decades to follow. The green Untitled was executed in the spring of 1988 in Rome, the wood panels covered in quick-drying acrylic (for speed was of the essence in these shots of propulsive vernal energy).Part 1 functions like a title page: two lines from Rilke’s Moving Forward pencilled in Twombly’s cursive hand (“… and in the ponds broken off from the sky, my feeling sinks as if standing on fishes”) flutter down the plane of white. “Fishes”, written in shimmery silver-grey oil stick near the bottom of the panel, spans from edge to edge, even moving on to the white frame. Words read as though seen through rippling water.Rhythmic spurts of graphic attention create a visual analogue to the assonance of the words. The hesitations around the letter “s” swish like fish. In the other panels, words seem to be losing the battle with a superabundance of verdure. Groping finger streaks of deep emerald green have the look of sea grasses shimmying in shallow water. Monet’s Water Lilies enter the frame of reference. The effect of spatial disorientation and the congested surfaces of these pond-panels suggest something of metaphorical drowning. The myth of Narcissus, in which identity is swallowed up by mirror reflection, lurks somewhere beneath these works. Mirror In 1994 the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, Texas – designed by Renzo Piano from Twombly’s original conception – opened as a joint project between the Dia and Menil Foundations to house an extensive permanent collection of the painter’s work. That same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a Twombly retrospective curated by Kirk Varnedoe. It met with success and marked a dramatic shift in his American reception. This was due largely to the curator’s mission of reinstating the artist’s grand themes into an individual poetics. Varnedoe essentially reads Twombly’s work as sublimation: “[Twombly] used the new art he created precisely to reforge, in a wholly different poetics of light and sexuality that was specific to his experience, the link between the heritage of the human past and the life of a personal psyche.” Concurrent with the MoMA retrospective, Twombly exhibited his Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) (1994) at the Gagosian Gallery in New York.The monumental piece measuring four by sixteen metres, a meditation on ageing and homecoming, offers an extraordinary array of types of mark, range of chromatic dynamics from the faintest stain of pale grey to outbursts of overripe wines and vibrant yellow-oranges, and a large body of associative references (to name only a few: Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, Keats, Catullus, Archilochus, Turner). The painting is intended to be read from right to left, like a Chinese scroll, marking the direction of Twombly’s return over the Atlantic as it does the movement of soul boats crossing the Nile, the primary pictorial theme. The varied marks also weave a complex web of connections to myth, poetry, history, memory, conventions of painting and earlier moments in Twombly’s career. Untitled was undertaken over a period of nearly 22 years, from 1972 to 1994. Just before it was about to be installed in the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, Twombly called Paul Winkler, then director of the Menil Collection; he had found a disused factory with enough wall space to hang the work in Lexington. The painting was rolled up and two Menil couriers were dispatched in an ice storm to deliver the work so that Twombly could rework it, yet again, before it was permanently hung.The anxiety around finishing this painting belies the artist’s thought expressed to Winkler, that it would be his last. It was not. He has been extremely prolific since 1994. The Bacchus series from 2005, for example, with its rush of roseate pigment and whorls of gestural energy, shows an extra-ordinary exuberance. In Simon Schama’s words: “The good ship Twombly sails on.” Claire Daigle is a writer, critic and assistant professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. She completed her PhD thesis, Reading Barthes / Writing Twombly, in 2004. 1928
Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on 25th April 1928 to parents from New England. 1942 - 1946
The most influential person on his formative years was the Spanish artist Pierre Duara who had come to Lexington from Paris for the duration of the war. Twombly attended his painting classes and lectures on Modern European Art for four years starting when he was fourteen years old. 1946 - 1949
Graduated from Lexington High School and attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. Spent the summer of 1947 in Ogunquit, Maine (an art colony that existed at the time) In the autumn of 1947 enrolled at the Boston Museum School, attending night classes the first year and day school in the second. During the late forties Twombly's main interests were German Expressionism, the Dada movement, Schwitters' as well as Soutine's work. Saw for the first time reproductions of works by Dubuffet and Giacometti which greatly impressed him. 1949 - 1951
Returned to Lexington, Virginia, to enter Washington and Lee University where an art department had opened that year. Continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York City in 1950 on a tuition scholarship. During the second semester met Robert Rauschenburg who was the first person of his own age to share the same interests and preoccuptions as an artist. In New York city he saw shows of Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still, Motherwell and others at Betty Parsons' and at the Kootz Gallery, and for the first time de Kooning's and Kline's work at the Egan Gallery. Spent the summer and winter semester of 1951 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. During the summer Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell were artists in residence. In November 1951 Twombly had his first one-person exhibition at The Seven Stairs Gallery in Chicago of paintings done at Black Mountain College that summer. The show was arranged by the photographer Aaron Siskind and the curator Noah Goldowsky. First exhibition in New York arranged by Robert Motherwell at the Kootz Gallery. 1952 - 1957
In the autumn of 1952 Twombly received a travelling grant from the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts and left for his first sojourn in Europe and North Africa. Went from Rome to Morocco and spent the winter 1952/1953 there. Travelled to Casablanca, Marrakesh, the Atlas Mountains, Tangier and Tetuan, returning to Rome by way of Madrid and Barcelona. Exhibition in Florence of tapestries done in Tangier and Tetuan. In the late spring went back to America, working in New York City in the studio of Robert Rauschenburg to prepare for a show at The Stable Gallery in the Autumn.
Inducted into the army in 1953; basic training in Augusta, Georgia, later stationed in Washington D.C. During weekends in Augusta he did drawings that formed the basis for the second one-person Stable show as well as direction everything would take from then on. In August 1954 Cy Twombly was discharged from the army. In Febuary he accepted a teaching post in Virginia for one year. Painted the large work Panorama in Rauschenburg's Fulton Street Studio, the only surviving painting of a group of six or eight works. Later in the autumn rented an apartment on William Street where he painted The Geeks, Free Wheeler, Acadamy and other works. Exhibited at The Stable Gallery in January 1956. Twombly had his third and last one-person show at The Stable Gallery in January 1957, where Panorama was shown. 1957 - 1962
Left New York for the summer in Italy where he took a house on the Isle of Procida for July and August. In the autumn rented an apartment in Rome facing the colosseum where Olympia, Sunset, Blue Room and Arcadia were painted. In 1958 Twombly had his first exhibition in Rome at the Galleria La Tartaruga; worked in a studio on Via Appia Antica. Returned to America in early spring. Married Tatiana Franchetti in New York City. Took a studio in Lexington, Virginia, painting a series of ten large paintings which were sent to Leo Castelli Gallery but never shown. After a second trip to Cuba and Mexico returned to Italy late in the summer and went to Sperlonga. In December his son Cyrus Alessandro was born in Rome. Twombly moved to Via Monserrato where he painted that year The Age of Alexander, to Leonardo, Crimes of Passion, Odeion, Sunset Series, School of Fountainbleau, Sahara, Herodiade and other works.
End of April second exhibition at the Galleria La Tartarugua, Rome. Spent the month of July in Saint'Angelo on the Isle of Ischia and worked on a large group of drawings. Travelled to Greece in August; in the autumn to Castel Gardena, Santa Christina, Dolomites. First exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in October. Rented a studio in Rome on Piazza del Biscione, his working place for the following five years. In 1961 the paintings Triumph of Galatea, the five Ferragosta works, Empire of Flora, Bay of Naples, School of Athens and other works were exucuted here. Spent the months of June and July in the Cyclades. On the Isle of Mikonos in August he worked on the extensive cycle of drawings Delian Odes; a few of these drawings were destroyed by playing children, who had discovered them in his rooms. Spent September in Castel Gardens, Dolomites. The Galleria La Tartaruga published a first comprehensive catalogue. The publication shows a selection of works executed between 1954 and 1960. 1962 - 1966
Went to Egypt and Sudan in January and Febuary. In 1962 he painted Birth of Venus, Hero and Leander, Leda and the Swan, Hyperion (to Keats), Dutch Interior, Second voyage to Italy and other works in his studio on Piazza del Biscione. In December 1963 Twombly worked on the nine-part painting Discourse on Commodus. The cycle refers to the life of the Roman emperor Aurelius Commodus (161-192 A.D.). In March Discourse on Commodus was shown in New York at the Leo Castilli Gallery. Spent the spring in Greece. During July and August Twombly worked in Castel Gardena, Dolomites, on a series of drawings which he called Notes from a Tower. In Rome he painted the triptych Ilium (One Morning Ten Years Later) the second version of School of Athens and Il Parnasso.
In the autumn he went to Munich to work on paintings which were shown at the Galere Friedrich + Dahlem, Munich, under the title The Artist in the Northern Climate together with the drawings Notes from a Tower. The theme of these paintings resumes the iconography of the drawings which he had done in the Dolomites during the summer. Twombly spent the first months of the year travelling to Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam. In October his first comprehensive museum exhibition opened at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, traveling on to the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the Stadelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Travelled to New York in November; worked there on a series of drawings to be shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in Febuary 1966. Went to Virginia at the end of the year. Returned from Lexington, Virginia, to New York City in January where he worked in a apartment on 52nd Street. Travelled by boat back to Naples on 22nd March. In Rome, the first grey paintings were done, in a novel, significantly reduced pictorial language, inscribing the motif with white wax crayon into a dark surface. The sparse iconography of these paintings was to become the center of Twombly's work for the following years. 1967 - 1971
Returned again to New York City in the autumn and rented a studio on Canal Street. In February 1967, the Galleria Notizie in Turin showed the first group of the grey paintings. In October, the Leo Castelli Gallery showed for the first time in the U.S.A. the grey paintings that Twombly had done in New York. In the months of October and November, Twombly worked in New York City and in Lexington. Travelled back by boat to Naples on 24 November. In January, the first Twombly retrospective opened at the Milwaukee Art Center. The exhibition showed a selection of paintings and drawings from 1956 onwards. In May and June, Twombly worked in a studio on the Bowery. Here he painted the Orion pictures and the series of paintings Synopsis of a battle the first large-scale version of Treatise on the Veil and Veil of Orpheus.
Spent the months of August in Castel Gardena and worked again in New York City in the autumn. In December Twombly went back for a short period to Captiva Island, Florida. Here he worked on a series of collages, in which he used reproductions of Leonardo's drapery studies, Deluge motifs as well as of his anatomical drawings. Later that month Twombly went to Los Angeles where he had his first exhibition at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery; from California he travelled to Mexico. Spent the month of January on the Caribbean Isle of Saint Martin where he made drawings whose iconography prepared the paintings which followed in the summer. From May through October Twombly worked in the Palazzo del Drago at the Lago di Bolsena, on a series of fourteen large-format paintings.
Worked in New York City in the winter and travelled to Lexington, Virginia. Spent the month of March 1970 again on Captiva Island. Visited Ireland in the summer. Painted in Rome the second, large-format version of Treatise on the Veil. In February, new works were shown at the Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin. Twombly spent the summer in the Villa Orlando on the Isle of Capri. In Rome, he painted a dark, large-format canvas, an extremely free work, whose monadic white cyphers invoked the paintings Panorama of 1955. Twombly worked on the group of the five Nini paintings in reaction to the death of Nini Pirandello. Went back to New York City again in November. 1972 - 1976
Spent part of the winter on Captiva Island, Florida. In January the Leo Castelli Gallery showed three large paintings which conclude the works of the last years with a rather conceptually conceived, minimalist iconography. After his return to Rome Twombly started to work on an immense canvas with the working title Anatomy of Melancholy (in reference to Robert Burton's treatise, published in 1621) the painting would change over the years and finally be completed more than 20 years later as one of his most challenging and beautiful works with a totally different, final subtitle: Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor. Went for the summer to Capri. Returned in the winter to Captiva Island where he worked on drawings.
In April the Kunsthalle Bern held a retrospective of his paintings which travelled to Munich. During the same time the Kunstmuseum Basel showed a comprehensive selections of drawings done in the last 20 years. A first monograph of drawings edited by Heiner Bastien was published in Berlin. Spent the month of August in Castel Gardena, Santa Christana where he did a cycle of drawings entitled 24 Short Pieces. Travelled with friends to northern and central India in November. Stayed on Captiva Island in February. Upon his return to Rome worked on a portfolio of prints titled Natural History Part I Mushrooms. Had gallery exhibitions in Munich, Turin, Paris and Naples. An archive of Cy Twombly's paintings was established in Berlin.
In the winter he went to Captiva Island and after his return to Italy took a house in Bassano in Teverina which he restored and used as a studio for the summer in the following years. Travelled to Tunesia in the spring. In March 1975, seven years after the first museum exhibition in America, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia showed a comprehensive selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The exhibition travelled to San Fransico. Started in May to work on large-scale works on paper. Mars and the Artist and Apollo and the Artist were done in Rome. 1976 - 1981
Completed in May a large group of water colours in New York which were shown at the Leo Castille Gallery in September. In November the Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Rome opened an exhibition with large-scale works on paper, including Leda and the Swan, Idilli and Narcissus. Finished a second portfolio of prints titled Natural History Part II - Some Trees of Italy. In the summer of 1977 Twombly completed the three-panel painting Thyrsis in Bassano. Started to work on the large cycle Fifty Days at Iliam, a ten part painting which was inspired by reading the Iliad in the translation by Alexander Pope. The scenes of the painting follow decisive incidents of the battle for Troy. Twombly finished the work in the following year. Fifty Days at Iliam was shown in November by the Lone Star Foundation at Heiner Friedrich's space in New York. After the completion of this cycle Twombly painted the two works Goethe in Italy.
In the autumn the first monograph on the paintings was published by Propylen Verlag in Berlin. In Naples the Lucio Amelio Gallery showed a group of eleven sculptures which Twombly had done during the last two years. At the Whitney Museum of American Art a comprehensive retrospective of works executed between 1954 and 1977, opened in April. Twombly returned to Paris in May where he met Roland Barthes. Worked in Bassano in June and July. Participated with a large cycle of drawings in the Venice Biennale. Went for the first time in late spring to work in a studio in Formia, a harbour town between Rome and Naples. Returned to Bassano for the months of August and September where he worked on a large group of drawings which were exhibited at the Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery in New York in April 1982. The Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld held a first retrospective of his sculptures. The exhibition included 23 works executed between 1955 and 1981. In Rome in November he painted the three large Bacchus works. 1982 - 1987
Stayed at the beginning of the year in New York, and after his return to Italy in March worked in Gaeta, a harbour town near Formia. Spent the summer months in Bassano. The Naxos, Suma, and Lycian drawings were executed in Bassano. In the beginning of February 1983 he went to Key West, Florida where he did a set of drawings. Returned via New York to Rome at the end of March, and in June he travelled to Yemen with his son Alessandro. Worked in Bassano in August on the Anbasis drawings. Spent the winter in Key West where he did the set of drawings Proteus. The Musee d'art contemporiain in Bordeaux opened an exhibition of works on paper in May which focused on mythological themes. In the summer he worked in Bassano where the three-part painting Hero and Leandro was done.
In September the Kunst-halle Baden-Baden staged a large retrospective of paintings and drawings, curated by Katherine Schmidt. On the occasion of the exhibition the state of Baden-Wurttemburg honoured Cy Twombly with the award Internationaler Preis fur bildenende Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg. Spent the winter months in Egypt staying mostly in Luxor. In the summer Twombly worked in Bassano where the second painting Hero and Leandro (to Christopher Marlowe) was completed. The large series Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair was finished; the nine-part painting is based on poetical quotations by Rilke, Rumi and Leopardi. Twombly took a house in Gaeta which he restored during the following years. Did the design and supervised the painting of the curtain for the Opera Bastille in Paris. In February of 1987 a large retrospective, curated by Harold Szeemann, was held in the Kunsthaus Zurich; the exhibition travelled to Madrid, London, Dusseldorf and Paris. Twombly was elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The city of Siegen, Germany, awarded him the Rubens-Preis. 1988 - 1992
In the spring worked in Gaeta on paintings Venere Sopra Gaeta and in Rome on a cycle of nine Green paintings which were shown in the summer at the Venice Biennale. Received the award Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In February 1989 the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York City held an exhibition of his early paintings and sculptures, works which were done in 1951 and 1953; most of them were shown for the first time. The Menil Collection in Houston opened an exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptures in September. The show travelled to Des Moines in April 1990. In October 1989 the ten-part painting Fifty Days at Iliam, completed in 1978, was installed in a room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. Twombly spent the winter months on the Seychelles where he did a series of drawings which were shown in the summer of 1990 at the gallery of Thomas Ammann in Zurich. In 1992 Thomas Ammann included them in a book entitled Souvenirs of d'Arros and Gaeta.
In December the Gagosian Gallery in New York showed 8 of the 14 Bolsena-paintings of 1969 for the first time together. Spent Christmas 1989 in Istanbul. Received in April 1990 the Skowhegan medal for painting. Painted several works entitled Summer Madness in Bassano and completed the large sculpture Thermopylae which was shown at the gallery Piece Unique in Paris in the autumn of 1991. Spent the winter in Sorrento. Stayed on the Greek island Syros in early summer. In July began to paint the two sets of the Quattro Stagioni in Bassano. Spent the winter on Jupiter Island, Florida. Did a series of sculptures. In the spring took a house in Lexington, Virginia. Returned in the summer to Italy. In Gaeta completed a three-panel painting in which the boundless space dissolved in sea and air. The motif of the boat becomes one of his favourite forms. Now uses quotations from poetry even more frequently. The first volume of the Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings was published in the autumn.
1993 - 1995
Returned to Jupiter Island, Florida for the winter. Spent the summer months in Gaeta where he finished the paintings Autunno and Inverno of the first set of Quattro Stagioni. Received an honorary doctor's degree from the Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Spent the winter in Lexington and the spring in Gaeta. Rented a space in a warehouse upon his return to Lexington where he finished the very large canvas (now extended to three parts) which he had begun more than 20 years earlier in Rome, and now subtitled Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor. Later in June and July he completed the first set of the Quattro Stagioni in Gaeta. Went back to Lexington in August.
At the end of September a comprehensive retrospective, curated by Kirk Varnedoe, opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition travelled for more than a year: first to Houston in February 1995, then to Los Angeles in April and finally to Berlin in early autumn of 1995. During the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the Gagosian Gallery showed for the first time the very large three-panel painting in New York. After his return to Italy in November 1994 Twombly went to Munich, Berlin, Prague and Paris. Finished the set of the Quattro Stagioni in Gaeta.
Went to Houston in February for the opening of the second venue of the MoMA-exhibition and the inauguration of the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston; a museum founded by the De Menil family and designed by Renzo Piano based on plans by the artist and in close collaboration with him. 35 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from 1954 to the present are permanently exhibited. The fourth volume of the catalogue Raisonne of his paintings, edited by Heiner Bastion, was published in Munich. Travelled to Berlin at the end of August to attend the opening of the last venue of his retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Visited St. Petersburg afterwards and returned to Italy. 1996 -2000
In Gaeta , during the summer months, he works on sculptures and three sets of monoprints, depicting for the first time, motifs influenced by the Battle of Lepanto, which are shown in December in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art. An exhibition titled Cy Twombly: Photographs opens at the Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles. In May Twombly is included in the influential exhibition L'Informe: Mode d'emploi, organised by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, which is structured around the theories of Georges Bataille. In the autumn he travels to Japan to receive the Premium Imperiale. In early 1997 a new solo exhibition opens at Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne.
His first solo sculpture exhibition in the United States, Cy Twombly: Ten Sculptures, opens in November at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on the publication of his catalogue raisonne of sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio. He spends the winter of 1998 in Lexington, where he concentrates on sculpture. Eight of his sculptures are shown at the American Academy in Rome. In May 1999, he travels to Iran and spends time in Isfahan. Twombly's works are included in the group exhibition The American Century: Art & Culture 1900 - 2000, Part II, 1950-2000, held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In Gaeta, he completes Three Studies for the Temeraire, a re-interpretation of J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, for the group exhibition Encounters: New Art From Old, organised by the National Gallery, London, which opens in 2000.
2000 -2004
At the end of winter 2000, he returns to Gaeta via Basel, where Cy Twombly: Die Skulptur, a retrospective exhibition of sixty-six sculptures made between 1948 and 1998, opens at the Kunstmuseum Basel in April, organized by Katherine Schmidt in collobaration with Paul Winkler. It travels over the the following year ( as Cy Twombly: The Sculpture) to The Menil Collection, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art, Washinghton, D.C. In the autumn The Coronation of Sesostris series, inspired by the legendary king of Ancient Egypt, is shown at Gagosian Gallery, New York. He spends the winter of 2001 in the Caribbean and the spring in Lexington, where he works on sculptures, photographs and on the Lepanto paintings, a dramatic representation of the navel battle fought by the Holy League of Catholic states against the Ottoman Empire, which took place in the Gulf of Corinth in 1571. The exhibition Cy Twombly: Six Paintings, Three Sculptures opens in June at Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich.
The Lepanto series is presented at the 49th Venice Biennale, where Twombly is awarded the Golden Lion. During the summer and autumn months he works on paintings and sculptures in Gaeta. While in Gaeta, he receives the Constantino Nivola Prize for his sculptural work. An exhibition of photographs opens at Schimer/Mosel Gallery in Munich, while the Lepanto series is shown in New York at the Gagosian Gallery and in Munich at the Alte Pinakothek. Other solo exhibitions are held at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; and at the Daros Collection, Zurich (Audible Silence: Cy Twombly at Daros). Twombly spends part of the winter 2003 in St-Barthelemy, returning in the spring to Lexington, where he creates the Gathering of Time series. These new works are shown at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in May. In July he travels to St Petersburg, where on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the State Hermitage Museum present the retrospective show Cy Twombly at the Hermitage: Fifty Years of Works on Paper. The exhibition travels over the next year to the Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Serpentine Gallery, London. 2004 -2009
Twombly spends part of the winter season in the Seychelles, in Paris and in London. Back in Gaeta, he works on ten paintings that are shown in London in May-June, on the occasion of the opening of the new Gagosian Gallery (Ten Paintings and a Sculpture). In June a new exhibition opens at Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich. During the winter and early spring he works in Gaeta on a new series of eight Untitled (Bacchus) paintings which are later shown at Gagosian Gallery, in New York. The Hermitage exhibition Fifty Years of Works on Paper travels in January 2005 to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, then opens in May at the Menil Collection, Houston. An archive to catalogue Twombly's works on paper is established in Rome.
In the autumn he stays in Lexington working on sculptures. The show Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos opens at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in November. Twombly spends January and February in the Seychelles and the spring months in Gaeta, still focusing primarily on sculptures. In April, an exhibition of recent sculptures opens at Munich's Alte's Pinakothek. He is awarded the McKim Prize at the American Academy in Rome. He travels to Syros, Greece, in the summer and returns to Lexington in the autumn, where he creates a new series of paintings. In November and December he works on the Blooming Paintings in Gaeta. In June 2007, the Blooming Paintings are shown at Collection Yvon Lambert in Avignon (Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things). In the same month, a group of paintings produced in Lexington the previous autumn is exhibited at Thomas Ammann Fine Art Gallery, Zurich, on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary. The artist spends the summer in Abruzzo and in Gaeta, working on paintings. In September he goes to Paris to oversee his ceiling commission for the Salle des Bronzes, Musee du Louvre, then returns to spend the autumn in Lexington, Virginia. In November the Blooming Paintings are shown at Gagosian Gallery in New York. Gagosian Gallery inaugurates a new gallery in Rome on 15 December with an exhibition of Twombly's Three Notes from Salalah. During winter 2008 Twombly spends most of his time in Gaeta, working on a major new cycle of paintings on the theme of Roses. In March, he makes trips to to Maastricht and San Moritz. In April he celebrates his eightieth birthday in Ponza. The Tate Modern retrospective opens in June; it travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazional d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, later in 2009. Twombly's Lepanto paintings go on display at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Recent exhibitions include "Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007," The Art Institute of Chicago 2009 and "Sensations of the Moment," the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2009. __________________________________________
References : http://www.cytwombly.info www.gagosian.com Gagosian Gallery
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www.menil.org Menil Collection
www.speronewestwater.com Sperone Westwater Gallery
www.philamuseum.org The Philadelphia Museum of Art
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