Paintings by Cy Twombly

Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly Jr. was an American painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenber and Jasper Johns but chose to live in Italy after 1957.

His paintings are predominantly large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and grafitti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of most of the museums of modern art around the world, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London and the New York’s museum of Modern Art. He was also commissioned for the ceiling of a room of the Musee du Louvre in Paris.

Many of his later paintings and works on paper shifted toward “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poets as Stephane Maliame, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. Examples of this are his “Apollo” and “The Artist” and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word “VIRGIL”.

Top Image: “Untitled”, 1972, Oil Based House Paint, Wax Crayon, and Lead Pencil on Canvas

Bottom Image: “Untitled I”, (Bacchus Series), 2005, Acrylic on Canvas