“What I am trying to establishis—that Modern Art isn’t disl ocated, but something with roo ts, tradition, and continuity. For myself, the past is the s ource (for all art is vitally contemporary).”
Cy Twombly (b. 1928, Lexington, Virginia; d. 2011, Rome) forged a singular visual language, fusing the eternal beauty of classical antiquity, mythology, and poetry with the gestural immediacy of Abstract Expressionism. Coalescing historical and literary references with a deeply personal lexicon of mark-making, Twombly’s work channels the epic and the intimate through an engagement with language, line, and memory.
Initially trained in art at Washington and Lee University, Twombly studied at the Arts Students League in New York and the vanguard Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met and befriended John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1952, a formative journey through North Africa and Italy with Rauschenberg introduced Twombly to the layered cultural histories that became central to his practice. By the late 1950s, Twombly had developed his signature style—scribbled, scratched, and inscribed surfaces that reference both classical culture and contemporary graffiti, often executed in bitumen and oil-based media.
Settling in Rome in 1957, Twombly immersed himself in the material and mythological traces of the ancient world. His paintings and works on paper from the 1960s are frequently inscribed with the names of mythological figures, invoking narratives from Homer, Virgil, and Sappho through the lens of abstraction. In 1967, Twombly began the Blackboard series, characterized by fluid white loops and arcs set against gray grounds, echoing the rhythm of handwriting and recalling Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks—a source of inspiration for Twombly’s approach to drawing as a form of learning.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Twombly expanded his formal and material vocabulary, integrating collage, sculpture, and large-scale painting. His techniques became increasingly experimental, incorporating finger painting, assemblage, and brushes affixed to long sticks. These decades saw a renewed focus on the expressive potential of color and surface, culminating in a series of monumental works that explored botanical motifs, classical references, and Bacchic themes. Twombly’s late works, produced primarily in Italy during the 2000s and 2010s, reflect a return to exuberant color and sensual form. His final decade was marked by a focus on lush floral compositions and mythic cycles, underpinned by a lifelong engagement with the poetic and the eternal.