ART & ARTISTS: 2011-03-06

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Cy Twombly 1990s - 2000s

Here is the third selection of works by Cy Twombly, featuring work from the 1990s and 2000s. For biographical and backgound information on Twombly, see part 1.

1990 Liri

1990 Summer Madness

1990 Untitled

1993-4 Quattro Stagioni, Part III, Autunno

2000 Coronation of Sesostris (3)

2000 Coronation of Sesostris (10)

2001 Lepanto (1)

2005 Untitled

2005-6 III Notes from Sarah (1)

2008 The Rose II

2010 Camino Real II

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Cy Twombly 1970s - 1980s

Here is the second selection of works by Cy Twombly, featuring work from the 1970s and 1980s. For biographical and backgound information on Twombly, see part 1.

1970 Untitled

1974 Natural History Part I, Mushrooms no. IV

1974 Untitled

1975 Apollo and the Artist

1978 Ilians in Battle

1980 Pan II

1982 Untitled

1983 Anabasis

1983 Lycian

1984 Hero and Leandro, Part 1

1984 Proteus

1985 Wilder Shores of Love

1986 Untitled

1988 Untitled

1989 Untitled

Monday, 7 March 2011

I like Cy Twombly’s work so much, and his oeuvre is spread over such a long period that I am featuring his work over three blogs, dealing first with the 1950s – 1960s, followed by the 1970s – 1980s, and finally the 1990s – 2000s.

Twombly is an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings. Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. From 1950 to 1951, he studied at the Art Students League of New York where he met Robert Rauschenberg, who encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in 1951 and 1952 he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage.

The Kootz Gallery in New York organized Twombly's first solo exhibition in 1951. At this time his work was influenced by Kline's black-and-white gestural expressionism, as well as Paul Klee’s imagery. In 1952, he received a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which enabled him to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy and France.
On his return in 1953 he served in the army as a cryptologist, an activity that left a distinct mark on his artistic style. From 1955 to 1959, he worked in New York, where he became a prominent figure among a group of artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1959 he went to Italy, settling permanently in Rome. It was here that he began to work on a larger scale and distanced himself from his former expressionist imagery.

Twombly was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale in 1964. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Museum mounted the first retrospective of his art. The artist has also been honored by retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1987, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1988, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1994, with additional venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin. The Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, which was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1995, houses more than thirty of Twombly's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, dating from 1953 to 1994. A large collection of Twombly's work is also kept by the Museum Brandhorst and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.